Blessed by Washington, Israeli Crime Against Humanity Continues, Killing 315 Including Babies and Women, Destroying Universities and Prisons
29/12/2008 (Hari ke-3)
Fueled by hatred and racism the Israeli crime against humanity aimed at exterminating the unarmed and starving Palestinians has continued with the blessing of the Bush administration for the third day.
The three-day death toll rose to 315, including seven children under the age of 15 who were killed in two separate strikes late Sunday and Monday, medics said. Israel launched the deadliest aggression against Palestinians in decades on Saturday.
Israel's air force obliterated the material symbols of Hamas power on the third day of its overwhelming assault on Gaza on Monday, striking a house next to the Hamas premier's home, devastating a security compound and flattening a five-story building at the major university in Gaza.
However, analysts believe that Hamas’ moral power, as a symbol of resistance against Israeli occupation and Israeli crimes against humanity, is gaining strength by the day.
Palestinian rockets usually fired at Israel in retaliation to Israeli oppression blockades on Gaza have reached new destinations that have never thought they would before the latest Israeli assault on Gaza people.
On Sunday, Hamas missiles struck for the first time near the city of Ashdod, twice as far from Gaza as Ashkelon and only 25 miles from Israel's heart in Tel Aviv.
On Monday, a medium-range rocket fired at the Israeli city of Ashkelon killed a man and wounded several others. It was the second fatality in Israel since the beginning of the offensive and the first person ever to be killed by a rocket in Ashkelon, a city of 120,000.
Israel widened its deadliest-ever air offensive against the starving people of Gaza on Sunday, pounding smuggling tunnels and government strongholds, sending more tanks and artillery toward the Gaza border and activating thousands of reservists for a possible ground invasion.
Israel's intense bombings — some 300 air strikes since midday Saturday — wreaked unprecedented destruction in Gaza, reducing entire buildings to rubble.
After nightfall on Sunday, Israeli aircraft attacked a building in the Jebaliya refugee camp next to Gaza City, killing a 14-month-old baby, a man and two women, Gaza Health Ministry official Dr. Moaiya Hassanain told the Associated Press.
In the southern town of Rafah, Palestinian residents said a toddler and his two teenage brothers were killed in an airstrike aimed at a Hamas commander.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said one Palestinian working with UN and eight trainees were among the dead.
Israeli aircraft also bombed the Islamic University and government compound in Gaza City and the house next to the residence of Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh in a Gaza City refugee camp. Haniyeh, in hiding, was not home. The refugee camp hosts hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were forced out of their homes and towns in the territories that are now called the state of Israel.
Shlomo Brom, a former senior Israeli military official, said it was the deadliest force ever used in decades of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, reported the Associated Press.
The prime minister of Turkey, one of the few Muslim countries to have relations with Israel, called the air assault a "crime against humanity."
In the most dramatic attacks Sunday, warplanes struck dozens of smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border, cutting off a lifeline that had supplied Gazans with commercial goods. The influx of goods had helped the people of Gaza defy an 18-month Israeli blockade.
Sunday's blasts shook the ground several miles away and sent black smoke high into the sky.
Earlier, warplanes dropped three bombs on one of Hamas' main security compounds in Gaza City, including a prison. Moments after the blasts, frantic inmates, their faces dusty and bloodied, scrambled down the rubble. One man, still half buried, raised a hand to alert rescuers.
Gaza's nine hospitals were overwhelmed. Hassanain, who keeps a record for the Gaza Health Ministry, said more than 290 people were killed over two days and more than 800 wounded.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights, which keeps researchers at all hospitals, said it had counted 251 dead by midday Sunday, and that among them were 20 children under the age of 16 and nine women.
Although the White House was mum about the situation in Gaza on Sunday after speaking out expansively on Saturday, Washington blessed the Israeli crime in Gaza and clearly supported it.
On Saturday, The White House said only Hamas could end the cycle of violence by putting a stop to the rocket fire on Israel.
"These people are nothing but thugs, and so Israel is going to defend its people against terrorists like Hamas," spokesman Gordon Johndroe said at George W. Bush's Texas ranch, where the president is preparing to spend the new year.
"If Hamas stops firing rockets into Israel, then Israel would not have a need for strikes in Gaza," Johndroe said. "What we've got to see is Hamas stop firing rockets into Israel."
"The United States hold Hamas responsible for breaking the ceasefire; we want the ceasefire restored. We're concerned about the humanitarian situation and want all parties concerned to work to make sure the people of Gaza get the humanitarian assistance they need," said Johndroe.
Despite the destruction, Hamas and the Palestinian resistance in general remain confident that Israel will in the end be defeated.
A Hamas leader in exile, Osama Hamdan, said the movement would not relent. "We have one alternative, which is to be steadfast and resist and then we will be victorious," Hamdan said in Beirut.
Also in Beirut, Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Hezbollah resistance movement, said he would not abandon Hamas, but did not threaten to attack Israel. Hezbollah defeated a 33-day Israeli aggression after which the Zionist state accepted defeat that led to the resign of its military chief of Staff and the Minister of Defense.
Meanwhile, the carnage inflamed Arab and Muslim public opinion, setting off street protests across the West Bank, in an Arab community in Israel, in several Middle Eastern cities.
In Tripoli, Libya, thousands of demonstrators gathered on Monday at Mortars’ Square and condemned the Israeli aggression on Gaza and then moved on and surrounded the Egyptian embassy in Tripoli demanding the Egyptian government to open its borders with Gaza and allow medical aid and assistance to reach the suffering Palestinians.
Some of the protests turned violent.
In occupied Palestine, Israeli troops quelling a West Bank march killed one Palestinian and seriously wounded another.
A crowd of anti-Israel protesters in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul became a target for a suicide bomber on a bicycle. In Lebanon, police fired tear gas to stop demonstrators from reaching the Egyptian Embassy.
Egypt, which has served as a mediator between Israel and the Palestinians as well as between Hamas and its rival Fatah, has been criticized for joining Israel in closing its borders with Gaza. The blockade was imposed after the Hamas takeover in June 2007.
In Jerusalem, Israel's Cabinet approved a callup of 6,500 reserve soldiers, raising fears of an impending ground offensive. Israel has doubled the number of troops on the Gaza border since Saturday and also deployed an artillery battery
Since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, after 38 years of full military occupation, Israeli forces have repeatedly returned to the territory to hunt the resistance.
Israeli leaders said they would press ahead with the Gaza campaign, despite enraged protests across the Arab world and Syria's decision to break off indirect peace talks with the Jewish state. Israel's foreign minister said the goal was to halt Gaza rocket fire on Israel for good, but not to reoccupy the territory.
(The Tripoli Post)
Senin, 26 Januari 2009
ISRAEL VS NAZI
Israel Applies Nazi Tactics to Hide Crime against Humanity, Prevents Journalists from Entering Gaza
5/1/2009
Applying the Nazis tactic to hide their crimes against humanity, Israel’s Ministry of Defense prevents journalists from entering Gaza to report on its crimes committed against starving 1.5 million. Israel has killed 534 including 107 children and wounded over 2500 many of them seriously.
The Ministry of Defense refused to allow foreign correspondents to cross over from Israel into the Gaza Strip on Monday, despite a court ruling, a representative of the foreign media in Israel said, reported Haaretz online on Monday.
In Gaza, Israel cruel war machine continues to kill children and women as it destroys homes, schools, mosques and public services buildings including police stations, municipalities, hospitals and children play grounds.
The Israeli Supreme Court had ruled last week that eight foreign correspondents could enter the Strip if the Gaza crossings were open to allow humanitarian relief.
According to Haaretz, Israeli officials on Monday, citing security risks, prevented the journalists from entering the Strip when the crossings were opened to allow 200 foreigners to leave the salient.
Israel has allowed no foreign correspondents to enter the Strip from Israel since it began its Operation "Cast Lead" against Hamas on December 27.
On the tenth day of the Israeli aggression on Gaza, Monday 5 Jan. 2009, the toll has reached 534 people dead, including more than 107 children, and over 2500 wounded many of which seriously.
On Monday morning alone, Israel committed three massacres that let to the killing of 18 civilians including 5 children and the two complete families. In one of the families Israel murdered the father, mother and their five children when a tank hit their home.
An Israeli military spokesman said the Israeli army attacked 130 targets in Gaza on Sunday night, meaning more destruction in the tiny strip.
The Israel Foreign Press Association petitioned the Supreme Court on the issue, and Israel agreed to allow a poll of eight journalists into the Strip when the crossings were opened.
Two of the places would be assigned by the Israel Defense Forces, and the other six placed would be decided on the basis of a lottery in the presence of an attorney.
(The Tripoli Post)
5/1/2009
Applying the Nazis tactic to hide their crimes against humanity, Israel’s Ministry of Defense prevents journalists from entering Gaza to report on its crimes committed against starving 1.5 million. Israel has killed 534 including 107 children and wounded over 2500 many of them seriously.
The Ministry of Defense refused to allow foreign correspondents to cross over from Israel into the Gaza Strip on Monday, despite a court ruling, a representative of the foreign media in Israel said, reported Haaretz online on Monday.
In Gaza, Israel cruel war machine continues to kill children and women as it destroys homes, schools, mosques and public services buildings including police stations, municipalities, hospitals and children play grounds.
The Israeli Supreme Court had ruled last week that eight foreign correspondents could enter the Strip if the Gaza crossings were open to allow humanitarian relief.
According to Haaretz, Israeli officials on Monday, citing security risks, prevented the journalists from entering the Strip when the crossings were opened to allow 200 foreigners to leave the salient.
Israel has allowed no foreign correspondents to enter the Strip from Israel since it began its Operation "Cast Lead" against Hamas on December 27.
On the tenth day of the Israeli aggression on Gaza, Monday 5 Jan. 2009, the toll has reached 534 people dead, including more than 107 children, and over 2500 wounded many of which seriously.
On Monday morning alone, Israel committed three massacres that let to the killing of 18 civilians including 5 children and the two complete families. In one of the families Israel murdered the father, mother and their five children when a tank hit their home.
An Israeli military spokesman said the Israeli army attacked 130 targets in Gaza on Sunday night, meaning more destruction in the tiny strip.
The Israel Foreign Press Association petitioned the Supreme Court on the issue, and Israel agreed to allow a poll of eight journalists into the Strip when the crossings were opened.
Two of the places would be assigned by the Israel Defense Forces, and the other six placed would be decided on the basis of a lottery in the presence of an attorney.
(The Tripoli Post)
KEBOHONGAN ISRAEL
Israel’s Lie Machine is Working Flat Out
16/01/2009
Israel goes to great lengths to suppress all mention of the ccupation and play-acts the pathetic victim.
By Stuart Littlewood
While the murderous assault on Gaza continues, I notice there's a briefing document on the website of the Israeli Embassy in London which has a lie in every line. The West's mainstream media repeat them, and even the most senior TV and radio interviewers don’t bother to challenge them.
The document is a transcript of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni's statement to the Israeli press dated 27 December 2008 – a day that will live in infamy. It is a perfect example of the falsehoods used to dupe not only us westerners but Israel’s own people. The statement shows how the regime's view of itself is constructed on a web of dishonesty and self-delusion.
For example:
• "Israeli citizens have been under the threat of daily attack from Gaza for years."
Palestinians have been under harsh Israeli occupation for 60 years.
• "Only this week hundreds of missiles and mortars shells were fired at Israeli civilian communities."
Only one in 500 Qassam rockets causes a fatality. How many thousands of Israeli bombs, missiles, rockets, grenades and tank-shells have been blasted into the crowded city and towns of the Gaza Strip by Israel’s high-tech weaponry?
• "Until now we have shown restraint. But today there is no other option than a military operation."
The only legitimate option for Israel is to end the occupation and withdraw behind its 1967 border, as required under international law and UN resolution. Israel has been killing Palestinians at the rate of 8 to 1 since 2000, and children at the rate of nearly 12 to 1 (B’Tselem figures). This is somebody’s idea of restraint?
• "We need to protect our citizens from attack through a military response against the terror infrastructure in Gaza."
Self defence is not a right exclusive to Israel. Palestinians have an equal right to protect their citizens from the terror tactics of Israel.
• "Israel left Gaza in order to create an opportunity for peace."
Israel never left Gaza. It still occupies Gaza's airspace and coastal waters and controls all entrances and exits.
• "In return, the Hamas terror organization took control of Gaza and is using its citizens as cover while it deliberately targets Israeli communities and denies any chance for peace."
Hamas was voted into power as the legitimate government of Palestine. Israel chose not to accept the people's choice, which amounted to a denial of their human rights, and immediately set about obliterating it.
• "We have tried everything to reach calm without using force. We agreed to a truce through Egypt that was violated by Hamas, which continued to target Israel, hold Gilad Shalit and build up its arms."
Try talking. The Israelis' ongoing siege and economic blockade, begun shortly after Hamas was elected early in 2006, was never going to generate calm. And why is Shalit considered more important than the 9,000 Palestinians abducted and held prisoner by Israel? As soon as a Hamas government was formed Israeli troops arrested 8 Hamas ministers and 20 other parliamentarians, making the work of government impossible.
• "Israel continues to act to prevent humanitarian crisis and to minimize harm to Palestinian civilians."
Every agency operating in Gaza has warned of the deepening humanitarian crisis and protested about the starvation and suffering, especially of children many of whom show evidence of stunted growth.
• "The responsibility for harm to civilians lies with Hamas."
Not according to the Fourth Geneva Convention.
• "Hamas is a terrorist organization, supported by Iran, that does not represent the legitimate national interests of the Palestinian people but a radical Islamist agenda that seeks to deny peace for the peoples of this region."
Hamas was the popular choice of Palestinians at the last election. It is entitled under international law to take up arms against an illegal occupier and invader. If it is supported by Iran, so what? Israel receives mega-support from the U.S. When it comes to terror, it is Israel's conduct which fits the U.S. definition of terrorism so perfectly - see Bush's Executive Order 13224, Section 3 - http://www.treas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/programs/terror/terror.pdf
• "While confronting Hamas, Israel continues to believe in the two State solution and remains committed to negotiations with the legitimate Palestinian Authority in the context of the peace process, launched at Annapolis."
Israel is busy establishing irreversible facts on the ground that make a viable Palestinian state impossible. As everyone knows, the regime has reneged on the peace process and carries on building illegal settlements and the illegal Wall, and demolishing Palestinian homes.
Months ago Hamas accepted a Palestinian state based on internationally recognized (pre-1967) borders, in accordance with UN resolutions, with full sovereignty and its capital in Jerusalem, but this has been ignored. Hamas also offered a 10-year truce, also ignored. Earlier, Arafat and the PLO recognized the State of Israel in the Oslo agreement but what good did it do? Today’s U.S.-backed, Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority is not representative of the Palestinian people.
• "Israel expects the support and understanding of the international community, as it confronts terror, and advances the interest of all those who wish the forces of peace and co existence to determine the agenda of this region."
Israel, next to the U.S., the biggest purveyor of terror in the region and only advances its own interests. It may get the support of Israel lobby stooges in other western governments but is rapidly earning the contempt of everybody else.
From a statement dated 22 December 2008:
• "Hamas, backed by Iran, has regularly stated its desire to see the complete destruction of Israel."
Israel is itself a leading destroyer and currently engaged in trying to wipe out Hamas and the Gazans. Iran’s Ahmadinajad quoted the late Ayatollah Khomeini as saying that "this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time" - fair comment considering Jerusalem, with Bethlehem, was designated an 'international city' under the UN Partition Plan.
Israeli propaganda twisted the Iranian’s words to read “Israel must be wiped off the map”. Zionist sources and the manifestos of Israeli political parties have made it clear for a long time that Israel plans to wipe Palestine off the map, and every act and lie is directed towards that end.
• "Our fight is not with the people of Gaza; it is with the extremists of Hamas."
Then why does the Israeli navy harass and fire on peaceable Gazan fishermen who are well within their own territorial waters? Why does Israel prevent Palestinian students from taking up places at foreign universities and block hospital spares, medicines, foodstuffs and foreign medics from entering Gaza?
Why has the Israeli navy just rammed a mercy vessel in international waters taking doctors and medicines to Gaza? Latest air-strikes have hit the Islamic University and the ministry of education. These are direct attacks on Gazan civil society and its infrastructure.
• "Hamas started this conflict, and it bears responsibility for any harm to civilians on either side."
The conflict, started by Jewish terrorists, has been going on for 60 years, decades before Hamas came into being.
• "Israel’s only responsibility is to protect Israeli citizens."
As the occupying power Israel has a duty to see that the people of the occupied territories come to no harm.
• "Just as Israel seeks to defend its civilian population, Hamas seeks to kill them."
This reads far better the other way round: “Just as Hamas seeks to defend its civilian population, Israel seeks to kill them.”
• "Rocket attacks have continued for years and are now a daily occurrence. How long does the international community expect Israel will wait before defending itself against them?"
The rocket attacks will end when Israel ends the occupation and stops terrorizing its neighbours.
• "In the south of Israel, Israeli citizens live with air raid sirens sounding every day - sometimes every hour. Their situation is intolerable."
Not half as intolerable as it is for the Gazans, who live in constant fear of air raids and re-invasion and are constantly under surveillance by armed drones which can fire missiles under computer control from an armchair in Israeli headquarters.
• "For years, the international community has turned a blind eye to this onslaught. Only when Israel seeks to stop the rockets do they take notice."
For years the international community has turned a blind eye to Israel's violations of international law and human rights, which is why the problem remains unsolved.
• "Hamas is not only the enemy of Israel - it is the enemy of every Palestinian who believes in peace."
Israelis just can’t come to terms with the Palestinians' democratic choice and are bent on obliterating it.
• "It is Hamas' attacks - not Israel's reactions - that destroy every opportunity we have for peace."
The world has managed to work out by now that Israel doesn't want peace until it has stolen all the land and water it needs to expand its racist state into a ‘Greater Israel’. It is well on the way to achieving this and won’t be thwarted.
• "Palestinian militants targeted by Israel are not just the enemies of the Israeli people; they are criminals under international law, and enemies of peace."
Israel is in no position to preach international law.
• "What is collective punishment? 'Collective punishment' is a city - schools, hospitals, homes - civilians being bombarded every single day by rockets and mortars."
Collective punishment is keeping a whole population bottled up under siege and blocking supplies and exports, smashing their infrastructure, wrecking their economy and starving their children. Trying to equate Sderot with what’s happening in the Gaza Strip is idiotic.
• "Today's Middle East is divided between extremists and pragmatists. Hamas, backed by Iran, belongs to the extremists, who must be defeated for the sake of the future of the Middle East.... Israel’s primary goal is peace."
Israel's primary goal is the expansion of Israel by making the occupation of the West Bank permanent and bringing the Gazans to their knees.
The core issue in this struggle is the illegality of Israel’s brutal occupation. Israel goes to great lengths to avoid and suppress all mention of it and play-acts the pathetic victim. As the official statements (above) show, the strategy is to frame and define the situation in Israel’s own terms regardless of the truth.
It uses advanced propaganda skills, and the elaborate Israel lobby network, to persuade western politicians and media to accept Israel’s version of events (and even use Israel’s biased language) and not question its motives.
In political PR terms it works wonderfully well. The loony leaders of my own government happily spread the poison and don’t seem interested in halting Israeli aggression and the vaporizing, dismembering and crushing of Gaza’s population. In human PR terms it is a disaster.
I have been listening to the BBC’s senior interviewers these last few days. None has had the gumption to ask Israeli spokesmen the only question that matters – the ‘killer’ question on which hangs the key to peace: WHEN IS ISRAEL GOING TO END ITS OCCUPATION AND RETURN TO THE PALESTINIANS THEIR LANDS AND FREEDOM?
About The Author
Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation.
(Middle East Online)
(The Tripoli Post)
16/01/2009
Israel goes to great lengths to suppress all mention of the ccupation and play-acts the pathetic victim.
By Stuart Littlewood
While the murderous assault on Gaza continues, I notice there's a briefing document on the website of the Israeli Embassy in London which has a lie in every line. The West's mainstream media repeat them, and even the most senior TV and radio interviewers don’t bother to challenge them.
The document is a transcript of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni's statement to the Israeli press dated 27 December 2008 – a day that will live in infamy. It is a perfect example of the falsehoods used to dupe not only us westerners but Israel’s own people. The statement shows how the regime's view of itself is constructed on a web of dishonesty and self-delusion.
For example:
• "Israeli citizens have been under the threat of daily attack from Gaza for years."
Palestinians have been under harsh Israeli occupation for 60 years.
• "Only this week hundreds of missiles and mortars shells were fired at Israeli civilian communities."
Only one in 500 Qassam rockets causes a fatality. How many thousands of Israeli bombs, missiles, rockets, grenades and tank-shells have been blasted into the crowded city and towns of the Gaza Strip by Israel’s high-tech weaponry?
• "Until now we have shown restraint. But today there is no other option than a military operation."
The only legitimate option for Israel is to end the occupation and withdraw behind its 1967 border, as required under international law and UN resolution. Israel has been killing Palestinians at the rate of 8 to 1 since 2000, and children at the rate of nearly 12 to 1 (B’Tselem figures). This is somebody’s idea of restraint?
• "We need to protect our citizens from attack through a military response against the terror infrastructure in Gaza."
Self defence is not a right exclusive to Israel. Palestinians have an equal right to protect their citizens from the terror tactics of Israel.
• "Israel left Gaza in order to create an opportunity for peace."
Israel never left Gaza. It still occupies Gaza's airspace and coastal waters and controls all entrances and exits.
• "In return, the Hamas terror organization took control of Gaza and is using its citizens as cover while it deliberately targets Israeli communities and denies any chance for peace."
Hamas was voted into power as the legitimate government of Palestine. Israel chose not to accept the people's choice, which amounted to a denial of their human rights, and immediately set about obliterating it.
• "We have tried everything to reach calm without using force. We agreed to a truce through Egypt that was violated by Hamas, which continued to target Israel, hold Gilad Shalit and build up its arms."
Try talking. The Israelis' ongoing siege and economic blockade, begun shortly after Hamas was elected early in 2006, was never going to generate calm. And why is Shalit considered more important than the 9,000 Palestinians abducted and held prisoner by Israel? As soon as a Hamas government was formed Israeli troops arrested 8 Hamas ministers and 20 other parliamentarians, making the work of government impossible.
• "Israel continues to act to prevent humanitarian crisis and to minimize harm to Palestinian civilians."
Every agency operating in Gaza has warned of the deepening humanitarian crisis and protested about the starvation and suffering, especially of children many of whom show evidence of stunted growth.
• "The responsibility for harm to civilians lies with Hamas."
Not according to the Fourth Geneva Convention.
• "Hamas is a terrorist organization, supported by Iran, that does not represent the legitimate national interests of the Palestinian people but a radical Islamist agenda that seeks to deny peace for the peoples of this region."
Hamas was the popular choice of Palestinians at the last election. It is entitled under international law to take up arms against an illegal occupier and invader. If it is supported by Iran, so what? Israel receives mega-support from the U.S. When it comes to terror, it is Israel's conduct which fits the U.S. definition of terrorism so perfectly - see Bush's Executive Order 13224, Section 3 - http://www.treas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/programs/terror/terror.pdf
• "While confronting Hamas, Israel continues to believe in the two State solution and remains committed to negotiations with the legitimate Palestinian Authority in the context of the peace process, launched at Annapolis."
Israel is busy establishing irreversible facts on the ground that make a viable Palestinian state impossible. As everyone knows, the regime has reneged on the peace process and carries on building illegal settlements and the illegal Wall, and demolishing Palestinian homes.
Months ago Hamas accepted a Palestinian state based on internationally recognized (pre-1967) borders, in accordance with UN resolutions, with full sovereignty and its capital in Jerusalem, but this has been ignored. Hamas also offered a 10-year truce, also ignored. Earlier, Arafat and the PLO recognized the State of Israel in the Oslo agreement but what good did it do? Today’s U.S.-backed, Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority is not representative of the Palestinian people.
• "Israel expects the support and understanding of the international community, as it confronts terror, and advances the interest of all those who wish the forces of peace and co existence to determine the agenda of this region."
Israel, next to the U.S., the biggest purveyor of terror in the region and only advances its own interests. It may get the support of Israel lobby stooges in other western governments but is rapidly earning the contempt of everybody else.
From a statement dated 22 December 2008:
• "Hamas, backed by Iran, has regularly stated its desire to see the complete destruction of Israel."
Israel is itself a leading destroyer and currently engaged in trying to wipe out Hamas and the Gazans. Iran’s Ahmadinajad quoted the late Ayatollah Khomeini as saying that "this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time" - fair comment considering Jerusalem, with Bethlehem, was designated an 'international city' under the UN Partition Plan.
Israeli propaganda twisted the Iranian’s words to read “Israel must be wiped off the map”. Zionist sources and the manifestos of Israeli political parties have made it clear for a long time that Israel plans to wipe Palestine off the map, and every act and lie is directed towards that end.
• "Our fight is not with the people of Gaza; it is with the extremists of Hamas."
Then why does the Israeli navy harass and fire on peaceable Gazan fishermen who are well within their own territorial waters? Why does Israel prevent Palestinian students from taking up places at foreign universities and block hospital spares, medicines, foodstuffs and foreign medics from entering Gaza?
Why has the Israeli navy just rammed a mercy vessel in international waters taking doctors and medicines to Gaza? Latest air-strikes have hit the Islamic University and the ministry of education. These are direct attacks on Gazan civil society and its infrastructure.
• "Hamas started this conflict, and it bears responsibility for any harm to civilians on either side."
The conflict, started by Jewish terrorists, has been going on for 60 years, decades before Hamas came into being.
• "Israel’s only responsibility is to protect Israeli citizens."
As the occupying power Israel has a duty to see that the people of the occupied territories come to no harm.
• "Just as Israel seeks to defend its civilian population, Hamas seeks to kill them."
This reads far better the other way round: “Just as Hamas seeks to defend its civilian population, Israel seeks to kill them.”
• "Rocket attacks have continued for years and are now a daily occurrence. How long does the international community expect Israel will wait before defending itself against them?"
The rocket attacks will end when Israel ends the occupation and stops terrorizing its neighbours.
• "In the south of Israel, Israeli citizens live with air raid sirens sounding every day - sometimes every hour. Their situation is intolerable."
Not half as intolerable as it is for the Gazans, who live in constant fear of air raids and re-invasion and are constantly under surveillance by armed drones which can fire missiles under computer control from an armchair in Israeli headquarters.
• "For years, the international community has turned a blind eye to this onslaught. Only when Israel seeks to stop the rockets do they take notice."
For years the international community has turned a blind eye to Israel's violations of international law and human rights, which is why the problem remains unsolved.
• "Hamas is not only the enemy of Israel - it is the enemy of every Palestinian who believes in peace."
Israelis just can’t come to terms with the Palestinians' democratic choice and are bent on obliterating it.
• "It is Hamas' attacks - not Israel's reactions - that destroy every opportunity we have for peace."
The world has managed to work out by now that Israel doesn't want peace until it has stolen all the land and water it needs to expand its racist state into a ‘Greater Israel’. It is well on the way to achieving this and won’t be thwarted.
• "Palestinian militants targeted by Israel are not just the enemies of the Israeli people; they are criminals under international law, and enemies of peace."
Israel is in no position to preach international law.
• "What is collective punishment? 'Collective punishment' is a city - schools, hospitals, homes - civilians being bombarded every single day by rockets and mortars."
Collective punishment is keeping a whole population bottled up under siege and blocking supplies and exports, smashing their infrastructure, wrecking their economy and starving their children. Trying to equate Sderot with what’s happening in the Gaza Strip is idiotic.
• "Today's Middle East is divided between extremists and pragmatists. Hamas, backed by Iran, belongs to the extremists, who must be defeated for the sake of the future of the Middle East.... Israel’s primary goal is peace."
Israel's primary goal is the expansion of Israel by making the occupation of the West Bank permanent and bringing the Gazans to their knees.
The core issue in this struggle is the illegality of Israel’s brutal occupation. Israel goes to great lengths to avoid and suppress all mention of it and play-acts the pathetic victim. As the official statements (above) show, the strategy is to frame and define the situation in Israel’s own terms regardless of the truth.
It uses advanced propaganda skills, and the elaborate Israel lobby network, to persuade western politicians and media to accept Israel’s version of events (and even use Israel’s biased language) and not question its motives.
In political PR terms it works wonderfully well. The loony leaders of my own government happily spread the poison and don’t seem interested in halting Israeli aggression and the vaporizing, dismembering and crushing of Gaza’s population. In human PR terms it is a disaster.
I have been listening to the BBC’s senior interviewers these last few days. None has had the gumption to ask Israeli spokesmen the only question that matters – the ‘killer’ question on which hangs the key to peace: WHEN IS ISRAEL GOING TO END ITS OCCUPATION AND RETURN TO THE PALESTINIANS THEIR LANDS AND FREEDOM?
About The Author
Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation.
(Middle East Online)
(The Tripoli Post)
CERITA RAKYAT LIBYA
Sabe'a Sabaya
15/11/2007 by: Sondos Elqutait
There were (oh the things there were!) in a time long past…two brothers who married two sisters.
The elder brother Zaid's wife Nafisa was a wise and clever woman, who looked like most women do. His younger brother Zeyad married Jamila, who was what her name meant (a beauty). She was tall and slender as a palm tree; she had skin as delicate as jasmine, hair as dark and glossy as roub (date syrup) and the eyes of a gazelle. Her husband was as handsome as she was beautiful, and they were suited in character too, for one was as stupid and greedy as the other.
When the brothers' father died and his debts were paid only two small farms were left. The brothers and their wives worked hard, but though they were never very poor they were never very rich.
One day Zaid decided to go to the ghawals' palace and bring home some of their food and treasure. He told his wife of his plan, knowing that she would know how to help him.
"Elsabah rabah" (profit is in the morning) she said, "I'll tell you what to do tomorrow.
"Next morning Nafisa was awake long before dawn. First she took a gas'a to the storeroom and filled it with wheat.
Then she picked the juiciest cucumbers from the farm and the biggest eggs from the henhouse. In the kitchen she ground some of the wheat into flour, and then she started making sfinz. Sfinz, as we all know, is better than wedding drums at waking up lazy lie abeds. And true enough when the aroma of his favourite breakfast reached him Zaid jumped out of bed and - without even washing his face - he rushed to the kitchen.
"Good morning" he said cheerfully.
"A morning of carnation and jasmine" Nafisa replied, "you had better hurry if you don't want to miss dawn prayer at the mosque"
But, remembering that this wasn't a day like any other, Zaid looked at his smiling wife in consternation; how could she sing at her tahouna and make sfinz when he was going on a quest as dangerous as any feat 'Antar ibn Shadad had performed?"
"You've forgotten what I told you yesterday…" he protested indignantly, but before he could really begin to grumble he was interrupted by the first Adhan and had to hurry away.
Nafisa finished frying the sfinz and wrapped them in a cloth to keep warm while she prayed. Then she made date paste balls stuffed with almonds, cooked them in olive oil and put them into a leather pouch. Half the sfinz she sprinkled with salt and wrapped into a parcel, and this she packed into a gufa with hard-boiled eggs and cucumbers.
She was filling a second gufa with wheat kernels when a slightly shamefaced Zaid came back, but Nafisa was too prudent a woman to warm up cooling arguments, and they sat down to breakfast.
While they were eating sfinz with honey and sipping sage tea Nafisa gave her husband the advice he had asked for, and this is what she said:
"I'll give you a gufa of wheat to mark your trail, because the ghawals' magic will mislead you, and a pouch of date balls to eat on the journey, so you're not hungry when you reach the palace.
There's a giant fig tree in their garden, you must climb up as soon as you arrive, and stay there all day and all night. The ghawal will shake it on their way in and out but if you do as I say God will keep you safe. At dawn the ghawal will set out on their hunt: eat the food in the gufa I will give you and then climb down and enter the palace from the back door. You will pass through six rooms, but you must not touch anything in them. Each room will have a table laid as if for a Sultan's banquet, but you must not taste the food. Each room will be full of jewels and fine clothes, but you must not try them on. Each room will contain a mirror, but you must not see your reflection in it. From the seventh room you may take what you want, but remember the ghawal will come back at sunset."
He promised to follow her instructions, and she gave him a water skin and the two gfaf, making a hole in the one full of wheat. So before the sun had had time to warm the world, Zaid set off towards the ghawals' palace. Although he could see it far off their spells confused him and he found he was walking in circles, but he never took the same path twice because the wheat marked where he had been.
He reached the palace some time after noon and climbed into the fig tree, taking with him his two gfaf and his waterskin. He stayed in the tree all day, munching the rest of his dates. At sunset the ghawal came home, singing:
Sabe'a sabaya fi gesbaya
Sa'ad elghulah takelhen
(Seven girls, in a bowl
Happy the ghulah that eats them)
Before they went into their palace, each ghulah took hold of the tree and shook it, but Zaid was ready for them: he held on and did not fall.
Next morning, the ghawal got up early, and came out of the palace at first light. Again, each ghulah shook the tree, but Zaid held on and did not fall.
When they had gone, Zaid ate some sfinz with the eggs and cucumber his wife had packed in the gufa; then he climbed down, walked around to the back and entered the palace.
He walked quickly through the first six rooms despite the tantalizing smells and glittering sights, and when he reached the seventh he put down his two empty gfaf, and with his knife made an opening in the waterskin.
First he filled the water skin with rubies and emeralds and sapphires; with amethysts and turquoise and coral and strings of pearls…. and when it was full he tied it securely and strapped it on.
Next he put gold into a gufa: dinars and bracelets and rings; armbands and necklaces and anklets and earrings …and when it was as heavy as he could manage he covered it with the most magnificent r'da he could find: a cream and pale blue silk, shot with threads of white gold, it had taken two hundred women two hundred nights and two hundred days to weave in Samarkand.
And then he filled the last one with food. There were saffron strands and ginger roots and nutmegs; crystallized Aleppo pistachio and coconut and pine nuts; guava and mangoes and honeydew melons…When this last gufa was packed it was a little before noon.
Zaid put on a suriya of the finest linen and a jard woven from the hair of white camels, and then he picked up his gfaf and waterskin and set off home, following the wheat trail.
Nafisa had been waiting as if on hot coals for her husbands return and welcomed him home with zaghareed. That night they dined better than the Sultan in Turkey, whose cook was in a bad mood.
A few days later Jamila visited her sister. She noticed her wearing six heavy gold bangles and went home with her head full of nothing else. When her husband heard he too wondered how his brother could afford to buy jewelry, especially when he had told him that he was planning to buy more stock for his farm. So Zeyad went to his brother and asked him where this sudden wealth came from.
Now Zaid loved his brother but he knew his faults well, so he did not want him to go to the ghawals' palace. At first he only told him that he had been lucky, and would share his good fortune with his brother. Zeyad however insisted that he should be told were the money came from, and this was how their argument went:
Zaid said: "I'll give you a quarter."
But Zeyad refused
Zaid said: "I'll give you half."
But Zeyad refused
Zaid said: "I'll give you all"
But Zeyad still refused:
"You must tell me where you got all this" he said "so I can get more than you."
So Zaid told him exactly what he had done, and before they parted repeated his instructions to make sure he remembered:
"make a trail, take food with you, stay in the fig tree for a night and a day, hold tight to the tree when the ghawal come, enter the palace from the back, don't touch anything in the first six rooms, don't look into the ghawals' mirror, and don't eat their food when you are in the palace."
Zeyd took a bucket, bored holes in it and filled it with chalk. He did not take any food with him, thinking that his brother was just maliciously complicating his task.
"There is food where I am going," he thought, "why take any with me?" So early next morning he set off, but of course the chalk was difficult to see and he had a hard time reaching the palace as he kept going round in circles. When he finally reached it he went in straight away because it was getting dark and he was hungry.
Ravenous, he saw a feast fit for an Emir ready spread in the first room he entered, so he sat down to eat. The first sip of pomegranate sherbet, the first bite of roast lamb was in his mouth, and he was made mute. Then the fool dressed in rich clothes - the first glance in the mirror to see what he looked like in his new outfit, and he was struck blind. The first word of the ghawals' song in the distance heard while he was still in the palace, and he was deaf.
Terrified he hurried out, found the fig tree and clambered up just as the ghawal came home, singing:
Sabe'a sabaya fi gesbaya
Sa'ad elghulah takelhen
(Seven girls, in a bowl
Happy the ghulah that eats them)
As they passed under the tree, they shook it. Blind, scared, and weighed down with the food he had eaten, Zeyad fell quickly. So the ghawal ate him, except for his head, which they kept.
Next day, worried, his older brother decided to go after him. Nafisa thought for a while, and then sat down and sewed her husband a brightly coloured costume with bells everywhere. When he wore it he looked like the ghoulish jester Bu Sa'adiya, and when he moved he made enough noise to wake the dead. Again, she gave him food for the journey and a gufa of wheat kernels. Early next day, he set off, singing:
Kulma gutlak ya'ebn umi khud rub'aa gutli la
Kulma gutlak ya'ebn umi khud nusa gutli la
Kulma gutlak ya'ebn umi khud kulla gutli la
(Whenever I told you o son of my mother, take quarter- you said no. Whenever I told you o son of my mother, take half - you said no Whenever I told you o son of my mother, take all - you said no)
So he sang, until he reached the palace. The ghawal heard his song and his bells, and as ghawal like Bu Sa'adiya, they welcomed him joyfully. He came closer and saw that they were playing with his brother's head, throwing it from one to the other.
He approached a ghulah and asked her "honoured sister, whose head are you playing with, and how did you get it?"
She replied, "When we came back from our hunt yesterday the first mirror told us of a fool who broke into our palace, drank and ate at our table, and wore our clothes."
"Indeed to act so he must have been as you call him (a fool)."
"So he was, it took us less time to gobble him up than it would take you to think up a new song."
Then all the ghawal invited him to sing and dance for them. In return he asked that they allow him to join their game and, when he had finished his songs, to take the head away with him. They agreed, saying they had no more use for a fool's head. So Zaid sang for the ghawal and they were so pleased with his songs that they sent him off with many precious gifts. When he returned to the village he went to Jamila and gave her his brother's head, and the gifts that came with it.
And that was the end of greed!
(The Tripoli Post)
15/11/2007 by: Sondos Elqutait
There were (oh the things there were!) in a time long past…two brothers who married two sisters.
The elder brother Zaid's wife Nafisa was a wise and clever woman, who looked like most women do. His younger brother Zeyad married Jamila, who was what her name meant (a beauty). She was tall and slender as a palm tree; she had skin as delicate as jasmine, hair as dark and glossy as roub (date syrup) and the eyes of a gazelle. Her husband was as handsome as she was beautiful, and they were suited in character too, for one was as stupid and greedy as the other.
When the brothers' father died and his debts were paid only two small farms were left. The brothers and their wives worked hard, but though they were never very poor they were never very rich.
One day Zaid decided to go to the ghawals' palace and bring home some of their food and treasure. He told his wife of his plan, knowing that she would know how to help him.
"Elsabah rabah" (profit is in the morning) she said, "I'll tell you what to do tomorrow.
"Next morning Nafisa was awake long before dawn. First she took a gas'a to the storeroom and filled it with wheat.
Then she picked the juiciest cucumbers from the farm and the biggest eggs from the henhouse. In the kitchen she ground some of the wheat into flour, and then she started making sfinz. Sfinz, as we all know, is better than wedding drums at waking up lazy lie abeds. And true enough when the aroma of his favourite breakfast reached him Zaid jumped out of bed and - without even washing his face - he rushed to the kitchen.
"Good morning" he said cheerfully.
"A morning of carnation and jasmine" Nafisa replied, "you had better hurry if you don't want to miss dawn prayer at the mosque"
But, remembering that this wasn't a day like any other, Zaid looked at his smiling wife in consternation; how could she sing at her tahouna and make sfinz when he was going on a quest as dangerous as any feat 'Antar ibn Shadad had performed?"
"You've forgotten what I told you yesterday…" he protested indignantly, but before he could really begin to grumble he was interrupted by the first Adhan and had to hurry away.
Nafisa finished frying the sfinz and wrapped them in a cloth to keep warm while she prayed. Then she made date paste balls stuffed with almonds, cooked them in olive oil and put them into a leather pouch. Half the sfinz she sprinkled with salt and wrapped into a parcel, and this she packed into a gufa with hard-boiled eggs and cucumbers.
She was filling a second gufa with wheat kernels when a slightly shamefaced Zaid came back, but Nafisa was too prudent a woman to warm up cooling arguments, and they sat down to breakfast.
While they were eating sfinz with honey and sipping sage tea Nafisa gave her husband the advice he had asked for, and this is what she said:
"I'll give you a gufa of wheat to mark your trail, because the ghawals' magic will mislead you, and a pouch of date balls to eat on the journey, so you're not hungry when you reach the palace.
There's a giant fig tree in their garden, you must climb up as soon as you arrive, and stay there all day and all night. The ghawal will shake it on their way in and out but if you do as I say God will keep you safe. At dawn the ghawal will set out on their hunt: eat the food in the gufa I will give you and then climb down and enter the palace from the back door. You will pass through six rooms, but you must not touch anything in them. Each room will have a table laid as if for a Sultan's banquet, but you must not taste the food. Each room will be full of jewels and fine clothes, but you must not try them on. Each room will contain a mirror, but you must not see your reflection in it. From the seventh room you may take what you want, but remember the ghawal will come back at sunset."
He promised to follow her instructions, and she gave him a water skin and the two gfaf, making a hole in the one full of wheat. So before the sun had had time to warm the world, Zaid set off towards the ghawals' palace. Although he could see it far off their spells confused him and he found he was walking in circles, but he never took the same path twice because the wheat marked where he had been.
He reached the palace some time after noon and climbed into the fig tree, taking with him his two gfaf and his waterskin. He stayed in the tree all day, munching the rest of his dates. At sunset the ghawal came home, singing:
Sabe'a sabaya fi gesbaya
Sa'ad elghulah takelhen
(Seven girls, in a bowl
Happy the ghulah that eats them)
Before they went into their palace, each ghulah took hold of the tree and shook it, but Zaid was ready for them: he held on and did not fall.
Next morning, the ghawal got up early, and came out of the palace at first light. Again, each ghulah shook the tree, but Zaid held on and did not fall.
When they had gone, Zaid ate some sfinz with the eggs and cucumber his wife had packed in the gufa; then he climbed down, walked around to the back and entered the palace.
He walked quickly through the first six rooms despite the tantalizing smells and glittering sights, and when he reached the seventh he put down his two empty gfaf, and with his knife made an opening in the waterskin.
First he filled the water skin with rubies and emeralds and sapphires; with amethysts and turquoise and coral and strings of pearls…. and when it was full he tied it securely and strapped it on.
Next he put gold into a gufa: dinars and bracelets and rings; armbands and necklaces and anklets and earrings …and when it was as heavy as he could manage he covered it with the most magnificent r'da he could find: a cream and pale blue silk, shot with threads of white gold, it had taken two hundred women two hundred nights and two hundred days to weave in Samarkand.
And then he filled the last one with food. There were saffron strands and ginger roots and nutmegs; crystallized Aleppo pistachio and coconut and pine nuts; guava and mangoes and honeydew melons…When this last gufa was packed it was a little before noon.
Zaid put on a suriya of the finest linen and a jard woven from the hair of white camels, and then he picked up his gfaf and waterskin and set off home, following the wheat trail.
Nafisa had been waiting as if on hot coals for her husbands return and welcomed him home with zaghareed. That night they dined better than the Sultan in Turkey, whose cook was in a bad mood.
A few days later Jamila visited her sister. She noticed her wearing six heavy gold bangles and went home with her head full of nothing else. When her husband heard he too wondered how his brother could afford to buy jewelry, especially when he had told him that he was planning to buy more stock for his farm. So Zeyad went to his brother and asked him where this sudden wealth came from.
Now Zaid loved his brother but he knew his faults well, so he did not want him to go to the ghawals' palace. At first he only told him that he had been lucky, and would share his good fortune with his brother. Zeyad however insisted that he should be told were the money came from, and this was how their argument went:
Zaid said: "I'll give you a quarter."
But Zeyad refused
Zaid said: "I'll give you half."
But Zeyad refused
Zaid said: "I'll give you all"
But Zeyad still refused:
"You must tell me where you got all this" he said "so I can get more than you."
So Zaid told him exactly what he had done, and before they parted repeated his instructions to make sure he remembered:
"make a trail, take food with you, stay in the fig tree for a night and a day, hold tight to the tree when the ghawal come, enter the palace from the back, don't touch anything in the first six rooms, don't look into the ghawals' mirror, and don't eat their food when you are in the palace."
Zeyd took a bucket, bored holes in it and filled it with chalk. He did not take any food with him, thinking that his brother was just maliciously complicating his task.
"There is food where I am going," he thought, "why take any with me?" So early next morning he set off, but of course the chalk was difficult to see and he had a hard time reaching the palace as he kept going round in circles. When he finally reached it he went in straight away because it was getting dark and he was hungry.
Ravenous, he saw a feast fit for an Emir ready spread in the first room he entered, so he sat down to eat. The first sip of pomegranate sherbet, the first bite of roast lamb was in his mouth, and he was made mute. Then the fool dressed in rich clothes - the first glance in the mirror to see what he looked like in his new outfit, and he was struck blind. The first word of the ghawals' song in the distance heard while he was still in the palace, and he was deaf.
Terrified he hurried out, found the fig tree and clambered up just as the ghawal came home, singing:
Sabe'a sabaya fi gesbaya
Sa'ad elghulah takelhen
(Seven girls, in a bowl
Happy the ghulah that eats them)
As they passed under the tree, they shook it. Blind, scared, and weighed down with the food he had eaten, Zeyad fell quickly. So the ghawal ate him, except for his head, which they kept.
Next day, worried, his older brother decided to go after him. Nafisa thought for a while, and then sat down and sewed her husband a brightly coloured costume with bells everywhere. When he wore it he looked like the ghoulish jester Bu Sa'adiya, and when he moved he made enough noise to wake the dead. Again, she gave him food for the journey and a gufa of wheat kernels. Early next day, he set off, singing:
Kulma gutlak ya'ebn umi khud rub'aa gutli la
Kulma gutlak ya'ebn umi khud nusa gutli la
Kulma gutlak ya'ebn umi khud kulla gutli la
(Whenever I told you o son of my mother, take quarter- you said no. Whenever I told you o son of my mother, take half - you said no Whenever I told you o son of my mother, take all - you said no)
So he sang, until he reached the palace. The ghawal heard his song and his bells, and as ghawal like Bu Sa'adiya, they welcomed him joyfully. He came closer and saw that they were playing with his brother's head, throwing it from one to the other.
He approached a ghulah and asked her "honoured sister, whose head are you playing with, and how did you get it?"
She replied, "When we came back from our hunt yesterday the first mirror told us of a fool who broke into our palace, drank and ate at our table, and wore our clothes."
"Indeed to act so he must have been as you call him (a fool)."
"So he was, it took us less time to gobble him up than it would take you to think up a new song."
Then all the ghawal invited him to sing and dance for them. In return he asked that they allow him to join their game and, when he had finished his songs, to take the head away with him. They agreed, saying they had no more use for a fool's head. So Zaid sang for the ghawal and they were so pleased with his songs that they sent him off with many precious gifts. When he returned to the village he went to Jamila and gave her his brother's head, and the gifts that came with it.
And that was the end of greed!
(The Tripoli Post)
PANDANGAN GADDAFI TENTANG KONFLIK TIMTENG
Al-Gaddafi: Israelis will Never Live in Peace by Slaughtering Palestinian Children
23/01/2009
Speaking to Georgetown University's students and faculty, the Leader of the Revolution Muammar Al-Gaddafi made it clear on Wednesday that the Israelis won't live in peace by massacring Palestinian children even if they relied on US protection and the US Sixth Fleet.
Lecturing via a satellite closed circle from Tripoli, Al-Gaddafi said "the whole region of the Middle East is a sea of Arabs that it makes it impossible for the state of Israel to survive even if it kept on using fighter jets, phosphorus bombs, depleted uranium and other banned weapons against the Palestinians."
Israel, he said, wants to have a pure Zionist state with its own Jewish religion, language and tradition, "but this goal is unattainable in the Middle East where Palestine is considered to be an Arab state similar to Egypt, Syria Libya, Lebanon and Tunisia." "It is impossible to even dream of such objective," he added.
Al-Qathafi explained to students and faculty at George Washington D. C. the principles of his plan to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict as stated in his White Book, "Isratine".
Al-Gaddafi said "America will not be able to protect the Israelis all the time." The US, he maintains, is like the Soviet Union, which disappeared a few years ago, could face the same fate.
"A state that is exists in the shadow and protection of the US Sixth Fleet is not a state," he stressed. "The Israeli cannot bring peace to themselves by depending on America, slaughtering children and destruction. The Sixth Fleet could no longer exist in the Mediterranean Sea one day," he added.
Al-Gaddafi called on the students in Georgetown and other American universities to sympathize with the poor Palestinian people who are subjected to clear injustice. "Today, the Palestinians are refugees by the millions around the world, there are refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and Jordan. They are in exile in every Arab state," he said.
Al-Gaddafi said the world must support and sympathize with the Palestinian just cause the way it did with the Jews when they were oppressed and scattered around.
He said the area located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea cannot be used for two states, one for the Palestinians and another for the Israelis.
All initiatives and agreements to solve the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians did not work as Israel resorts to the most destructive weapons in the world as to destroy the Palestinians.
The solution after all this destruction and killing, Al-Gaddafi said, is only by establishing one state for both the Palestinians and Israelis where all Palestinian refugees can return and is governed by a democratic system.
The Israelis should accept reality: that is they will not succeed in establishing a pure Jewish state and they must come to the conclusion that this only a myth that will never become a reality.
(The Tripoli Post, 23 Januari 2009)
23/01/2009
Speaking to Georgetown University's students and faculty, the Leader of the Revolution Muammar Al-Gaddafi made it clear on Wednesday that the Israelis won't live in peace by massacring Palestinian children even if they relied on US protection and the US Sixth Fleet.
Lecturing via a satellite closed circle from Tripoli, Al-Gaddafi said "the whole region of the Middle East is a sea of Arabs that it makes it impossible for the state of Israel to survive even if it kept on using fighter jets, phosphorus bombs, depleted uranium and other banned weapons against the Palestinians."
Israel, he said, wants to have a pure Zionist state with its own Jewish religion, language and tradition, "but this goal is unattainable in the Middle East where Palestine is considered to be an Arab state similar to Egypt, Syria Libya, Lebanon and Tunisia." "It is impossible to even dream of such objective," he added.
Al-Qathafi explained to students and faculty at George Washington D. C. the principles of his plan to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict as stated in his White Book, "Isratine".
Al-Gaddafi said "America will not be able to protect the Israelis all the time." The US, he maintains, is like the Soviet Union, which disappeared a few years ago, could face the same fate.
"A state that is exists in the shadow and protection of the US Sixth Fleet is not a state," he stressed. "The Israeli cannot bring peace to themselves by depending on America, slaughtering children and destruction. The Sixth Fleet could no longer exist in the Mediterranean Sea one day," he added.
Al-Gaddafi called on the students in Georgetown and other American universities to sympathize with the poor Palestinian people who are subjected to clear injustice. "Today, the Palestinians are refugees by the millions around the world, there are refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and Jordan. They are in exile in every Arab state," he said.
Al-Gaddafi said the world must support and sympathize with the Palestinian just cause the way it did with the Jews when they were oppressed and scattered around.
He said the area located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea cannot be used for two states, one for the Palestinians and another for the Israelis.
All initiatives and agreements to solve the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians did not work as Israel resorts to the most destructive weapons in the world as to destroy the Palestinians.
The solution after all this destruction and killing, Al-Gaddafi said, is only by establishing one state for both the Palestinians and Israelis where all Palestinian refugees can return and is governed by a democratic system.
The Israelis should accept reality: that is they will not succeed in establishing a pure Jewish state and they must come to the conclusion that this only a myth that will never become a reality.
(The Tripoli Post, 23 Januari 2009)
Jumat, 23 Januari 2009
PIDATO LEADER PADA TGL 1 SEPTEMBER 2008 (BAG. 2)
Bagian : 2
Text of the Leader's speech in the grand festive session of the General People's Committee marking the 39th anniversary of Great al-Fateh Revolution Sunday night in Benghazi
Benghazi, 1.09.2008 - Jana
In this treaty Italy pledges - of course when it is approved by Italian Parliament and by Libyan People's Congresses , it becomes effective- to pay a quarter of a billion Dollars yearly for 20 years to come .
In other words, Italy for 20 years will pay the Libyan people a quarter billion every year > this is a good thing, if a poor country it is very important , but for us we are not interested in the material aspect, but what is important for us is to apply the new rule and that is colonialism must compensate the colonized peoples.
For 20 years Italy will carry out projects by building hundreds of houses at its expense in the areas destroyed by mines and by granting undergraduate and graduate scholarships for ( 100 ) Libyan students, renewable every time students finish their studies another ( 100 ) students will be sent instead and all these scholarships are funded by Italy.
Then, Libyans that can not be treated at the hospital that Italy Built in Benghazi for transplant and rehabilitation of the disabled as a result of mines and which was funded by Italy and which came as part of the declaration done in 98 that Italy builds a Medical Center in Benghazi for transplanting parts cut by mines - So those who can not be treated at the center in Benghazi are to be transferred to Italy for treatment at Italy's expense .
Then it will resume paying pensions to worthy Libyans, civilians, military and worthy heirs in conformity with the Italian regulations.
We told them the Libyan who fought alongside the Italians in the Italian military and recruited them by force, making them fight in Eritrea, Somalia and Ethiopia, have the right to retirement, you turned them into Italian soldiers...so how can you abandon them?
How can guarantee the thing we put forth in the treaty, they will resume paying salaries to heirs, because certainly they are not alive.
Then returning the manuscripts and antiquities, which we said they looted from Libya and taken it to Italy, no one talked about it until now, after the revolution we began talking after opening this file, the antiquities taken by the Italians, we asked about them.
In 1999, when D'Alema was Italy's prime minister, he returned a statue the whole world knew, the ordinary individual wouldn't its value, but the world, universities and archeologists knew know the goddess of beauty "Venus", he delivered it to us in a special cargo plane and it put in the museum.
Of course we were supposed to celebrate this, but for the Libyans "well it came and that's it".
Now, when our friend Berlusconi came yesterday he brought another very important statue "The Venus of Cyrene", which they took around 1936 and before that in 1913 they took Venus the goddess of beauty.
------Interposition: the Secretary of the GPC for Foreign Liaison and International Cooperation.
"They found it in Cyrene in 1913, but they didn't immediately take it to Italy, because they found it broken, they left for a while...just as you said, it's regarded the institutions of the art of the Romans, Greeks and Phoenicians...and leader, now it's priceless.
***The Leader:
Berlusconi brought with him this famous statue "The Venus of Cyrene", which they took around 1935, it was discovered about 1800 years ago...about 1800 it was discovered off the shores of Cyrene, after taking it out of the sea it was then taken to Italy around 1935, the Libya didn't saying anything.
A right no one asking for it...no one demanded it, now, we told them where is Venus the goddess of love and beauty that was in Cyrene? they said that they have taken it in 1913, and we told them bring it back, they replied sorry the Italian governor presented it to the German military commander, since Germany helped Italy during the war, and he was rewarded with the great statue, we said we do not recognize this, whether you've given it to Germany or Mars, we want the statue, they went to Germany and returned the statue...the Venus statue, it was returned when D'Alema was the prime minister.
"The Venus of Cyrene" came yesterday, and will be put in the Libyan museum.
The pact says "returning manuscripts and antiquities that were taken from Libya to Italy during the colonial period, the joint committee points out the manuscripts and antiquities that will be the subject of legal procedures for returning them.
The pact says "Both countries mutually express will to continue cooperating on the mean to reach an agreement regarding the Libyan citizens who were forcefully exiled from Libya during the colonial period, with the determination to close this painful file for which in the joint declaration of 1998 Italy expressed regret for the pain it cause to the Libyan people.
Affirm a firm will to build the stage of bilateral relations that is based on mutual respect, equality, complete cooperation and relation as equals".
This is the backbone of the pact, the material compensation is ion this form, and the moral compensation is what's important.
And I think our friend Berlusconi is a serious and sincere to Italy and the friendship between the two countries, he plays an important role...on the international arena, he's a distinguish figure, he has majority in the Italian parliament, and surely the Italian parliament would approve what the prime minister signed yesterday.
The world would say, as long as we saw the Italian Prime Minister shaking hands and kissing the son of Omar Al-Mukhtar, a new era must have actually began.
Anyway, this is a precedent n the international law, international relations and the world history.
No one imagined that a colonial country would apologize or compensate people they colonized, but now it has become a precedent thanks to the Libyan people and their revolutionists.
And after the Italian parliament and the Libyan people's congresses approve the pact, relations between the countries would go into a new stage, we will forget the abhorrent past and the colonial generations that made this detested past.
I think Libya would benefit from this.
Of course Italy is benefiting from Libyan gas and oil, its companies will begin working and getting projects in Libya, it will have the priority as it is a friendly country.
However, at the same time there are issues in the pact concerning the conveying technology from Italy to Libya, and teaching Libyans technology in Italy so they would bring it back to Libya.
I think we've done a lot of things in this area there is no time to read them out, that is Libya will link itself with one of the eight major industrial European country, and a friendly country.
I think after approving this pact, we can set forward to strengthen relations with Italy...relation of the equal and mutual respect.
Both sides are committed to the pact, respecting one another, an no aggression starts from one country to another.
We will begin building beneficial relations with a country such as Italy, I promised this, we will benefit from the economic and technological point of view, even from on the political aspect, we will have a friend in Nato, the EU, the Mediterranean and the 5+5.
This is a great benefit...a moral gain...political and moral gain, we would benefit from it for a long time.
you know the file with America has been finally closed, problems, issues and compensations have ended, we thank the Arab countries, Qatar and Emirates, which help resolve the problem.
The file with France has been closed, the relation with France now is excellent, friendship and cooperation.
And with the support of our brothers in Qatar and Emirates, the file with America has been closed, I think the file has been finally closed and we have a relation of friendship.
Even without friendship, we neither want friendship nor animosity with America, they should just leave us alone.
It's not important that we present ourselves as America's friends...this is insignificant, the important think is to have a relation without animosity, terrorism, war and airstrikes.
They accuse us of bombing, terrorize them and threatening their interests in the world, we did this and killed dozens of Americans, that we instigated the world and supported the revolutionaries in the world against America.
They think we're like this, that Libya is behind any threat against American interest in the world, they accuse us of this.
Consequently, they tell us "Why do you angry when we attack you, when we punish at the Security Council, when we impose sanctions against you, instigate the world you, put on the list of terrorism sponsoring states, because you begun, you destroyed American ships and planes and killed hundreds of Americans, and you attacked us in different places".
This is what the Americans say...we are oppressed - you attacked us - America said it is innocent - we the Americans are oppressed, we're kind people, you attacked us in Rome, in Berlin, in Oceans, at our home land and everywhere on land sea and air, you Libyan killed hundreds of Americans, we should retaliate".
Text of the Leader's speech in the grand festive session of the General People's Committee marking the 39th anniversary of Great al-Fateh Revolution Sunday night in Benghazi
Benghazi, 1.09.2008 - Jana
In this treaty Italy pledges - of course when it is approved by Italian Parliament and by Libyan People's Congresses , it becomes effective- to pay a quarter of a billion Dollars yearly for 20 years to come .
In other words, Italy for 20 years will pay the Libyan people a quarter billion every year > this is a good thing, if a poor country it is very important , but for us we are not interested in the material aspect, but what is important for us is to apply the new rule and that is colonialism must compensate the colonized peoples.
For 20 years Italy will carry out projects by building hundreds of houses at its expense in the areas destroyed by mines and by granting undergraduate and graduate scholarships for ( 100 ) Libyan students, renewable every time students finish their studies another ( 100 ) students will be sent instead and all these scholarships are funded by Italy.
Then, Libyans that can not be treated at the hospital that Italy Built in Benghazi for transplant and rehabilitation of the disabled as a result of mines and which was funded by Italy and which came as part of the declaration done in 98 that Italy builds a Medical Center in Benghazi for transplanting parts cut by mines - So those who can not be treated at the center in Benghazi are to be transferred to Italy for treatment at Italy's expense .
Then it will resume paying pensions to worthy Libyans, civilians, military and worthy heirs in conformity with the Italian regulations.
We told them the Libyan who fought alongside the Italians in the Italian military and recruited them by force, making them fight in Eritrea, Somalia and Ethiopia, have the right to retirement, you turned them into Italian soldiers...so how can you abandon them?
How can guarantee the thing we put forth in the treaty, they will resume paying salaries to heirs, because certainly they are not alive.
Then returning the manuscripts and antiquities, which we said they looted from Libya and taken it to Italy, no one talked about it until now, after the revolution we began talking after opening this file, the antiquities taken by the Italians, we asked about them.
In 1999, when D'Alema was Italy's prime minister, he returned a statue the whole world knew, the ordinary individual wouldn't its value, but the world, universities and archeologists knew know the goddess of beauty "Venus", he delivered it to us in a special cargo plane and it put in the museum.
Of course we were supposed to celebrate this, but for the Libyans "well it came and that's it".
Now, when our friend Berlusconi came yesterday he brought another very important statue "The Venus of Cyrene", which they took around 1936 and before that in 1913 they took Venus the goddess of beauty.
------Interposition: the Secretary of the GPC for Foreign Liaison and International Cooperation.
"They found it in Cyrene in 1913, but they didn't immediately take it to Italy, because they found it broken, they left for a while...just as you said, it's regarded the institutions of the art of the Romans, Greeks and Phoenicians...and leader, now it's priceless.
***The Leader:
Berlusconi brought with him this famous statue "The Venus of Cyrene", which they took around 1935, it was discovered about 1800 years ago...about 1800 it was discovered off the shores of Cyrene, after taking it out of the sea it was then taken to Italy around 1935, the Libya didn't saying anything.
A right no one asking for it...no one demanded it, now, we told them where is Venus the goddess of love and beauty that was in Cyrene? they said that they have taken it in 1913, and we told them bring it back, they replied sorry the Italian governor presented it to the German military commander, since Germany helped Italy during the war, and he was rewarded with the great statue, we said we do not recognize this, whether you've given it to Germany or Mars, we want the statue, they went to Germany and returned the statue...the Venus statue, it was returned when D'Alema was the prime minister.
"The Venus of Cyrene" came yesterday, and will be put in the Libyan museum.
The pact says "returning manuscripts and antiquities that were taken from Libya to Italy during the colonial period, the joint committee points out the manuscripts and antiquities that will be the subject of legal procedures for returning them.
The pact says "Both countries mutually express will to continue cooperating on the mean to reach an agreement regarding the Libyan citizens who were forcefully exiled from Libya during the colonial period, with the determination to close this painful file for which in the joint declaration of 1998 Italy expressed regret for the pain it cause to the Libyan people.
Affirm a firm will to build the stage of bilateral relations that is based on mutual respect, equality, complete cooperation and relation as equals".
This is the backbone of the pact, the material compensation is ion this form, and the moral compensation is what's important.
And I think our friend Berlusconi is a serious and sincere to Italy and the friendship between the two countries, he plays an important role...on the international arena, he's a distinguish figure, he has majority in the Italian parliament, and surely the Italian parliament would approve what the prime minister signed yesterday.
The world would say, as long as we saw the Italian Prime Minister shaking hands and kissing the son of Omar Al-Mukhtar, a new era must have actually began.
Anyway, this is a precedent n the international law, international relations and the world history.
No one imagined that a colonial country would apologize or compensate people they colonized, but now it has become a precedent thanks to the Libyan people and their revolutionists.
And after the Italian parliament and the Libyan people's congresses approve the pact, relations between the countries would go into a new stage, we will forget the abhorrent past and the colonial generations that made this detested past.
I think Libya would benefit from this.
Of course Italy is benefiting from Libyan gas and oil, its companies will begin working and getting projects in Libya, it will have the priority as it is a friendly country.
However, at the same time there are issues in the pact concerning the conveying technology from Italy to Libya, and teaching Libyans technology in Italy so they would bring it back to Libya.
I think we've done a lot of things in this area there is no time to read them out, that is Libya will link itself with one of the eight major industrial European country, and a friendly country.
I think after approving this pact, we can set forward to strengthen relations with Italy...relation of the equal and mutual respect.
Both sides are committed to the pact, respecting one another, an no aggression starts from one country to another.
We will begin building beneficial relations with a country such as Italy, I promised this, we will benefit from the economic and technological point of view, even from on the political aspect, we will have a friend in Nato, the EU, the Mediterranean and the 5+5.
This is a great benefit...a moral gain...political and moral gain, we would benefit from it for a long time.
you know the file with America has been finally closed, problems, issues and compensations have ended, we thank the Arab countries, Qatar and Emirates, which help resolve the problem.
The file with France has been closed, the relation with France now is excellent, friendship and cooperation.
And with the support of our brothers in Qatar and Emirates, the file with America has been closed, I think the file has been finally closed and we have a relation of friendship.
Even without friendship, we neither want friendship nor animosity with America, they should just leave us alone.
It's not important that we present ourselves as America's friends...this is insignificant, the important think is to have a relation without animosity, terrorism, war and airstrikes.
They accuse us of bombing, terrorize them and threatening their interests in the world, we did this and killed dozens of Americans, that we instigated the world and supported the revolutionaries in the world against America.
They think we're like this, that Libya is behind any threat against American interest in the world, they accuse us of this.
Consequently, they tell us "Why do you angry when we attack you, when we punish at the Security Council, when we impose sanctions against you, instigate the world you, put on the list of terrorism sponsoring states, because you begun, you destroyed American ships and planes and killed hundreds of Americans, and you attacked us in different places".
This is what the Americans say...we are oppressed - you attacked us - America said it is innocent - we the Americans are oppressed, we're kind people, you attacked us in Rome, in Berlin, in Oceans, at our home land and everywhere on land sea and air, you Libyan killed hundreds of Americans, we should retaliate".
PIDATO LEADER TGL 1 SEPTEMBER 2008
The Leader of the Revolution Attends GPC Festive Session
Benghazi- 1.9.2008
The Leader of the Revolution attended last night a special session of the General People's Congress in the city of Benghazi to mark the 39th anniversary of the Great al Fateh Revolution.
The Leader addressed the GPC session, devoting his speech to two main issues, the treaty of partnership and cooperation signed by Libya and Italy on Saturday.
The second issue is distribution of oil wealth directly to all Libyans and its consequences.
The Leader indicated that as discussion of the Italian colonial era was underway Libya had threatened to scale up relations with Italy to zero unless Italy admitted its guilt and fairly compensated the Libyan people for its occupation of Libya.
The Leader referred to the joint Libyan Italian Declaration issued in July 1998 under the government of Romano Brodi which implied an apology and recognition of compensation but never implemented because of procrastination and lack of sincerity on both
sides.
The Leader said ten years after the declaration it was imperative that a review of Libya's relationship with Italy be considered and Italy would be asked either to commit itself to apology and compensation or sever relations with it.
He said the painstaking effort led to the treaty which we signed yesterday.
The leader went on to say that Italy's promise to compensate, so as to close this file was meant to bring about a new precedent in international law ..that would consolidate the principle that he who colonize must compensate those he colonized ..it was not driven by the desire for money but rather the condemnation of colonialism as a failed project.
The Leader said that once the treaty entered into force, it would enter Libya's relationship with Italy into a new era of cooperation and friendship ,turning forever the dark page of colonial times.
Text of the Leader's speech in the grand festive session of the General People's Committee marking the 39th anniversary of Great al-Fateh Revolution Sunday night in Benghazi
Benghazi, 01.09.2008
The Leader of the Revolution last night delivered a speech in the opening session of the General People's Committee marking the 39th anniversary of the Great al-Fateh Revolution in the city of Benghazi, where the cheering activists welcomed him reaffirming their everlasting coalescence with him as the Leader of the Great Revolution and the maker of the Libyan people's historic victories; the latest of which, Italy's apology to the Libyan people for the period of Italian colonialism and its recognition of the Libyan people's right of compensation, which confirmed immortalization of thousands of the Libyan martyrs; among of whom, the Abduassalam Abuminiar al-Gadhafi, the first martyr of the first battle in 1911, and the last, Omar al-Mukhtar, the last martyr of the last battle in 1931.
Text of the Leader's speech in the grand festive session of the General People's Committee marking the 39th anniversary of Great al-Fateh Revolution Sunday night in Benghazi
Benghazi, 1.09.2008 - Jana
Following is the text of the leader's speech :
In the name of Allah.
Happy blessed Ramadan and the anniversary of the Revolution .
We try to make our speech in brief and to benefit from this important meeting with the activists of the great Libyan people.
It is useful to review some issues that concern us away from composition and rhetorical speeches.
There are two issues I would like to talk about in brief:
The first one the '' Treaty '' which was signed with Italy yesterday and the other issue is '' distribution of Oil wealth '' and its consequences.
That was long struggle against Italy. Needless to say that Italy made us suffering when it colonized us.
Not only Italy, but also all of the colonizing countries. What did France do in Algeria? What did it do in Tunisia? What did it do in Morocco? What did it do in Syria .. in Lebanon? What did England do in Egypt .. in Yemen .. in Sudan? What did Portugal, Spain Holland and Germany do in other countries?
After the Revolution, we decided not to overlook such things perpetrated against us.
The Italians today said "We are Italy of today and not that of yesterday". They said "We executed Mussolini who made you suffering and dragged him in streets, and so was Graziani. We executed all of those and won victory over them; and the Italian people got rid of monarchy".
We found an Italian army of 20 or 30 thousand soldiers in Libya; they occupied agricultural lands, shops, workshops and all economic activities in Libya, especially in Tripoli and neighboring cities. That means, their farms extended from Misurata to Tarhuna and Zawia; all agricultural lands were in the hands of Italians when the revolution broke out.
As we expelled the British whose forces were entering Libya as if entering part of Britain .. British forces were taking off from Cyprus and Europe and land in Butnan like in Scotland. They were moving around here as if inside Britain .
The same thing was with the Americans who were occupying Libyan land.. Libya was under military occupation when we carried out the Revolution in this same night of 1969.
Of course, the British and the Americans were expelled because they have no properties, they entered the Libyan land and were evicted from it .
But, the Italians have properties.. they own agriculture, buildings, streets, workshops and all economic activities. They were disowned of these Libyan properties that they regarded as their own and they also were expelled.
After this file was opened , it can not be closed unless it is settled.
Expelling them was unquestionable and the Libyan properties that were under their hands were restored from them by the Revolution .
Afterwards we found that we have thousands of Libyans arrested by Italy inside Libya and were transferred to Italy .. to the Italian Islands, and since then no one asked about them.
I even asked some MP's who were nationalists .. In the previous agent toppled monarch era, there were MP's whom we consider as patriots like " Sheikh Subhi'' , ''al-Magharbi'', Mustafa Ben Ammer and like Ali Mustafa al-Musrati and others .
At that time, we were young and students admiring patriotic Representatives. After the Revolution I asked them, how come you were MP's and at that time, perhaps there were exiled still alive and their sons alive ands you did not open this file with Italy though you were visiting Italy for tourism and you have good relation with Italy that exiled 4000 or 5000 Libyans ?
Why did not you ask about those Libyans and their fate , even if they were sheep, we must ask about them. If one transferred say 5000 she- camel or cow, one has to ask about them and say where did you keep this livestock wealth, so how about 5000 human beings?
They said, this is a reality but it did not come up to our minds..
It is strange thing, those representatives of the rotten era who were providing meals of rice in order to give them your votes and nominate them as your representatives in elections .. but the case of Libyans exiled to Italy , a tragedy like this, they were unable to defend it .
We opened this file , regrettably, it was open after the Revolution at a late time, We asked about this case they said there were no Libyans and we do not know what happened to them .
Of course this file still open and I will mention later what the treaty said about it.
We found antiques had been stolen .. and I asked them: Why you, the representatives, the reign and the ones who say Libya became independent on 24 December in 51 or 52, did not ask for the antiques? Why the Italians did not return them back?
The Italians said no one asked them to return back those antiques.
Your rulers and representatives, to whom you gave your votes and fought for, did not asked for those antiques!! Why they didn't say: we want to retrieve our antiques, or find us our expelled people.
Later on, the American aggression on Libya took place in 1986, as you know; the American Sixth Fleet took part in the aggression, especially on the city of Benghazi. The jets that bombarded Bnina Airport were of the American Sixth Fleet, which receives commands from Napoli in Italy and directed by a station in Lampedusa Island, 300 km off the Libyan shores.
The aggression came from Italy .. We said how come from Italy? Didn't you say that Italy was a friend of ours? And Italy was no longer the Colonialist one? They said the forces were American and Italy was a NATO member. NATO is led by America and dominated by it. America took part in a war and was assisted by Britain. Jets took off from Britain, America and the Sixth Fleet, which set off from Italy".
We told them that the file had not been closed; we would never forgive Italy for what it had perpetrated against us .. It displaced us; displaced our people to live in the world's neighboring countries; you destroyed our land and filled it with mines; you erected gibbets, where thousands of martyrs had been hanged; even Omar al-Mukhtar, the hero of the Libyan resistance, was executed by hanging instead of shooting; they considered him as a rebel against the government .. which government? They said Italy's government. Was the Italian government a Libyan one?!!
After that -as we said- they seized properties and became theirs.
The Italian colonialism was ended just after the Italians had been evicted from Libya after the revolution.
They planted our lands with mines; we paid the price of those mines for tens of years, where people died, animals died and land was destroyed. We asked several foreign companies to work in certain areas, they refused because of mines .. costs were high. If you want us to work in those areas, you have to demine them first. The mines made many Libyans to lose arms, legs and many other were injured by those mines.
Afterwards, we got rid of those mines on our own and gave the price of demining.
I told them it will not be possible for me to visit it..I may visit any other country in Europe but not Italy.. I will not visit it because there is vengeance between us and it ..I told them that I prefer that the enmity continues until a generation of Libyans are able to take revenge from Italy. All we had been able to do thus far is evict you ..to demand the whereabouts of exiles and the removal of landmines but the issue of refuge we leave it to future generations.
The Italians say" we are neighbours we are facing one another on the Mediterranean..Italy wants to correct its mistakes .. we let us be friends..we said we will not accept ..this is a revenge that will stand out ..we named 7th October the Day of Vengeance and deliberately expelled the Italians on the same day they invaded ..that day we still commemorate every year.
I personally wrote a story for a film called "injustice" or "Years of suffering" still being made, to show the Italian people the suffering endured by the Libyan people.
They said there was a treaty made in 1956 with the Kingdom of Libya and closed the subject .. Shameful thing: They paid about one million dinars or some thing like that. The Italians and the Libyans agents who were ruling in 56 . they ended every thing and they said we forgive you.. If only they mentioned the exiled or asked to remove mines since there were mines at that time , but none of that happened.
We have become - in fact - in big problem and discussion with them and we imposed sanctions on Italian companies , we made sanctions - those at the General People's Committee are the ones who know more about that - while the Italians were worried and asked to lift these sanctions on Italian companies.
Abdu-Rahman .. Clarify the sanctions imposed on Italian companies ?
____________Intervention by Abdul Rahman Shalgam, Secretary of GPC for Foreign Liaison and International Cooperation :
" The Revolution's Command Council issued in 1970 a law stating that no Italian company has the right to register or work in Libya or renew its registration or given a license except by a decree by the Cabinet at that time and afterwards this authorization was transferred to General People's Committee.
In accordance with that , any Italian company - as I said - in order to register or work in Libya must be referred to Secretary of GPC for Foreign Liaison and International Cooperation and the Secretary of GPC for Economy in order to review and study that case by case , then transferred to General People's Committee to grant license while other companies of any other nationality in the world were to register at GPC for Economy and carry out its works.
The Leader: Those were restrictions on Italian companies. They asked to lift those restrictions; we told them that we could not lift those restrictions before the problem between us and them was settled.
Actually, if the problem had not been settled, the relations between Italy and Libya would have been turned into hostile relations.
Of course Italy and Libya are in need of each other; at least Italy is need of Libya. As you know, the Libyan gas is exported to Italy and the Libyan oil is exported to Italy and the other European countries through submarine pipes connecting Libya and Italy; Italy has big interests in Libya.
It we go back to boycott, the matter would be disaster for Italy; we have threatened with this; we told them: if this files is not closed, we will bring relations to zero; they say: Why? we are friends of yours; we are with you in all international arenas, in the UN and others; this means Italy has never been against Libya; it feels regret for the past and for what Italian colonialists did.
In the year 1998, in the period of Prodi, we reached a Libyan-Italian Joint Declaration which recognized compensation; we told them to compensate the Libyan people and offer apology, but that was not put into implementation and was subject to procrastination by both sides; it was not serious.
After tens of years elapsed since the declaration, nothing has changed; accordingly, we had to reconsider relation; procrastination is not acceptable; there should be either commitment, recognition of compensation and apology; and hence good relations or the relation must be ended.
All this conflict resulted in the treaty that we signed yesterday - Treaty and not agreement - '' Treaty of Friendship Partnership and Cooperation between Libyan Jamahiriya and the Italian Republic'' .
Of course, this treaty were not read to you in full and it is not published , but you only heard about its content.. At the beginning it talks about '' political equality '' , in other words every country respects the other one .. Italy respects Libya and Libya respects Italy . Each country is free in its policies; in other words no one has the right to intervene , and not to resort to threat or use of force.. In other words, Italy does not use force against Libya and vice- versa and to ensure that force is not to be used between the two countries or colonialism and non- intervention in any form in the internal affairs of the state.
The important thing in this article is respect of the principles of international legitimacy, so Italy will not use or allow the use of its territories in any hostile action against Libya.
This is very important and it has been under long discussion in order to be included in the treaty and they said : '' We, Italy guarantee and pledge not to commit an aggression on Libya '' . We told them this is not enough .. They said How come not enough ? We told them because in 86 aggression against Libyan territories had come from Italy . They said it was not Italy , it came from America . We said , what is the use that you guarantee that no one will use you against Libya . What we want is that you ensure that neither America nor NATO are to use Italian territories against Libya.
After a long discussion we told them, then we would not make a treaty or reach any result ... Leave revenge to future generations and hostile relation remain better that aborting it.
This was article ( 4 ) '' In respect of principles of international legitimacy, Italy will not use or allow the use of its territories in any aggression against Libya and Libya will not use or allow the use of its territories in any hostile action against Italy '' .
This was the important article that Italy does not allow, according to this treaty even others to use its territories against Libya like what happened in the year 86.
Why did we strike the Island of Lampedusa in 86 ? Because the American Army used it. the American Third Fleet used this island .. the radar and direction station .
Additionally, there is another issue; the issue of "Dialogue of cultures and civilizations" .. That means don't impose your moral conducts on us and tell us to act the way you do; in turn we don't tell you to act the way we do.
Each group of people has its own culture, religion and traditions which must be respected. What we see now is that the west with America at the top is imposing it conducts on the third world. "If they walk body naked in streets, we have to do the same; otherwise they say we are backward or they won't make deals with us" .. they tell us to form parties, or they won't deal with us; so that they make parties against us; the tell us to carry out elections, or they won't deal with us.. They say they don't accept those crimes. They are some things in Quran and Islam which they said they don't accept them; Europe does not recognize these things; you have to change them if you want to be civilized"
Now, they impose several things on other countries .. they want interfere in the Islamic Sharia, Awqaf (endowment) and also the faith, the same way they impose on the gulf states and those regions. They interfere into Quran, faith, Hajj (Pilgrimage) and Zakat (alms).
They said no one can offer zakat to anybody else; this anybody else can be a terrorist and works for Bin Laden .. Zakat must be given to the government, if you want to offer Zakat. You know what they did with the spouse of the Saudi ambassador. She offered a person a Zaka of two thousand dollars; they said: How come you gave that person that money. That person could a Bin Laden's follower, a terrorist? You had to offer the two thousand dollars to the Saudi government, then the government can decide to whom it may give.
Then came the closure of the file of the past ..in which Italy pledged to compensate..but as I told you yesterday nothing could compensate the blood of our fathers and the Italian occupation of Libya.
This the reality ..if someone offered to be a friend of you ..if he did this in good faith and you have recovered what he had taken from you then you might say yes we can be friends behave as equals.
The Italian compensation pledge was meant to consolidate the principle that he who colonize must stand to account for his act..this will be a new precedent in international law that will help prevent repeat of colonialism.
Apology and compensation was meant to condemn colonialism .. to condemn the occupation of Libya and indeed occupation anywhere and anytime..it is a condemnation of the colonial project as a failure As far as we are concerned we are in no need for money from Italy or elsewhere ..we are in a strong position ..but we look for a new rule a new precedent in international law.
In this treaty Italy pledges - of course when it is approved by Italian Parliament and by Libyan People's Congresses , it becomes effective- to pay a quarter of a billion Dollars yearly for 20 years to come .
In other words, Italy for 20 years will pay the Libyan people a quarter billion every year > this is a good thing, if a poor country it is very important , but for us we are not interested in the material aspect, but what is important for us is to apply the new rule and that is colonialism must compensate the colonized peoples.
For 20 years Italy will carry out projects by building hundreds of houses at its expense in the areas destroyed by mines and by granting undergraduate and graduate scholarships for ( 100 ) Libyan students, renewable every time students finish their studies another ( 100 ) students will be sent instead and all these scholarships are funded by Italy.
Then, Libyans that can not be treated at the hospital that Italy Built in Benghazi for transplant and rehabilitation of the disabled as a result of mines and which was funded by Italy and which came as part of the declaration done in 98 that Italy builds a Medical Center in Benghazi for transplanting parts cut by mines - So those who can not be treated at the center in Benghazi are to be transferred to Italy for treatment at Italy's expense .
Benghazi- 1.9.2008
The Leader of the Revolution attended last night a special session of the General People's Congress in the city of Benghazi to mark the 39th anniversary of the Great al Fateh Revolution.
The Leader addressed the GPC session, devoting his speech to two main issues, the treaty of partnership and cooperation signed by Libya and Italy on Saturday.
The second issue is distribution of oil wealth directly to all Libyans and its consequences.
The Leader indicated that as discussion of the Italian colonial era was underway Libya had threatened to scale up relations with Italy to zero unless Italy admitted its guilt and fairly compensated the Libyan people for its occupation of Libya.
The Leader referred to the joint Libyan Italian Declaration issued in July 1998 under the government of Romano Brodi which implied an apology and recognition of compensation but never implemented because of procrastination and lack of sincerity on both
sides.
The Leader said ten years after the declaration it was imperative that a review of Libya's relationship with Italy be considered and Italy would be asked either to commit itself to apology and compensation or sever relations with it.
He said the painstaking effort led to the treaty which we signed yesterday.
The leader went on to say that Italy's promise to compensate, so as to close this file was meant to bring about a new precedent in international law ..that would consolidate the principle that he who colonize must compensate those he colonized ..it was not driven by the desire for money but rather the condemnation of colonialism as a failed project.
The Leader said that once the treaty entered into force, it would enter Libya's relationship with Italy into a new era of cooperation and friendship ,turning forever the dark page of colonial times.
Text of the Leader's speech in the grand festive session of the General People's Committee marking the 39th anniversary of Great al-Fateh Revolution Sunday night in Benghazi
Benghazi, 01.09.2008
The Leader of the Revolution last night delivered a speech in the opening session of the General People's Committee marking the 39th anniversary of the Great al-Fateh Revolution in the city of Benghazi, where the cheering activists welcomed him reaffirming their everlasting coalescence with him as the Leader of the Great Revolution and the maker of the Libyan people's historic victories; the latest of which, Italy's apology to the Libyan people for the period of Italian colonialism and its recognition of the Libyan people's right of compensation, which confirmed immortalization of thousands of the Libyan martyrs; among of whom, the Abduassalam Abuminiar al-Gadhafi, the first martyr of the first battle in 1911, and the last, Omar al-Mukhtar, the last martyr of the last battle in 1931.
Text of the Leader's speech in the grand festive session of the General People's Committee marking the 39th anniversary of Great al-Fateh Revolution Sunday night in Benghazi
Benghazi, 1.09.2008 - Jana
Following is the text of the leader's speech :
In the name of Allah.
Happy blessed Ramadan and the anniversary of the Revolution .
We try to make our speech in brief and to benefit from this important meeting with the activists of the great Libyan people.
It is useful to review some issues that concern us away from composition and rhetorical speeches.
There are two issues I would like to talk about in brief:
The first one the '' Treaty '' which was signed with Italy yesterday and the other issue is '' distribution of Oil wealth '' and its consequences.
That was long struggle against Italy. Needless to say that Italy made us suffering when it colonized us.
Not only Italy, but also all of the colonizing countries. What did France do in Algeria? What did it do in Tunisia? What did it do in Morocco? What did it do in Syria .. in Lebanon? What did England do in Egypt .. in Yemen .. in Sudan? What did Portugal, Spain Holland and Germany do in other countries?
After the Revolution, we decided not to overlook such things perpetrated against us.
The Italians today said "We are Italy of today and not that of yesterday". They said "We executed Mussolini who made you suffering and dragged him in streets, and so was Graziani. We executed all of those and won victory over them; and the Italian people got rid of monarchy".
We found an Italian army of 20 or 30 thousand soldiers in Libya; they occupied agricultural lands, shops, workshops and all economic activities in Libya, especially in Tripoli and neighboring cities. That means, their farms extended from Misurata to Tarhuna and Zawia; all agricultural lands were in the hands of Italians when the revolution broke out.
As we expelled the British whose forces were entering Libya as if entering part of Britain .. British forces were taking off from Cyprus and Europe and land in Butnan like in Scotland. They were moving around here as if inside Britain .
The same thing was with the Americans who were occupying Libyan land.. Libya was under military occupation when we carried out the Revolution in this same night of 1969.
Of course, the British and the Americans were expelled because they have no properties, they entered the Libyan land and were evicted from it .
But, the Italians have properties.. they own agriculture, buildings, streets, workshops and all economic activities. They were disowned of these Libyan properties that they regarded as their own and they also were expelled.
After this file was opened , it can not be closed unless it is settled.
Expelling them was unquestionable and the Libyan properties that were under their hands were restored from them by the Revolution .
Afterwards we found that we have thousands of Libyans arrested by Italy inside Libya and were transferred to Italy .. to the Italian Islands, and since then no one asked about them.
I even asked some MP's who were nationalists .. In the previous agent toppled monarch era, there were MP's whom we consider as patriots like " Sheikh Subhi'' , ''al-Magharbi'', Mustafa Ben Ammer and like Ali Mustafa al-Musrati and others .
At that time, we were young and students admiring patriotic Representatives. After the Revolution I asked them, how come you were MP's and at that time, perhaps there were exiled still alive and their sons alive ands you did not open this file with Italy though you were visiting Italy for tourism and you have good relation with Italy that exiled 4000 or 5000 Libyans ?
Why did not you ask about those Libyans and their fate , even if they were sheep, we must ask about them. If one transferred say 5000 she- camel or cow, one has to ask about them and say where did you keep this livestock wealth, so how about 5000 human beings?
They said, this is a reality but it did not come up to our minds..
It is strange thing, those representatives of the rotten era who were providing meals of rice in order to give them your votes and nominate them as your representatives in elections .. but the case of Libyans exiled to Italy , a tragedy like this, they were unable to defend it .
We opened this file , regrettably, it was open after the Revolution at a late time, We asked about this case they said there were no Libyans and we do not know what happened to them .
Of course this file still open and I will mention later what the treaty said about it.
We found antiques had been stolen .. and I asked them: Why you, the representatives, the reign and the ones who say Libya became independent on 24 December in 51 or 52, did not ask for the antiques? Why the Italians did not return them back?
The Italians said no one asked them to return back those antiques.
Your rulers and representatives, to whom you gave your votes and fought for, did not asked for those antiques!! Why they didn't say: we want to retrieve our antiques, or find us our expelled people.
Later on, the American aggression on Libya took place in 1986, as you know; the American Sixth Fleet took part in the aggression, especially on the city of Benghazi. The jets that bombarded Bnina Airport were of the American Sixth Fleet, which receives commands from Napoli in Italy and directed by a station in Lampedusa Island, 300 km off the Libyan shores.
The aggression came from Italy .. We said how come from Italy? Didn't you say that Italy was a friend of ours? And Italy was no longer the Colonialist one? They said the forces were American and Italy was a NATO member. NATO is led by America and dominated by it. America took part in a war and was assisted by Britain. Jets took off from Britain, America and the Sixth Fleet, which set off from Italy".
We told them that the file had not been closed; we would never forgive Italy for what it had perpetrated against us .. It displaced us; displaced our people to live in the world's neighboring countries; you destroyed our land and filled it with mines; you erected gibbets, where thousands of martyrs had been hanged; even Omar al-Mukhtar, the hero of the Libyan resistance, was executed by hanging instead of shooting; they considered him as a rebel against the government .. which government? They said Italy's government. Was the Italian government a Libyan one?!!
After that -as we said- they seized properties and became theirs.
The Italian colonialism was ended just after the Italians had been evicted from Libya after the revolution.
They planted our lands with mines; we paid the price of those mines for tens of years, where people died, animals died and land was destroyed. We asked several foreign companies to work in certain areas, they refused because of mines .. costs were high. If you want us to work in those areas, you have to demine them first. The mines made many Libyans to lose arms, legs and many other were injured by those mines.
Afterwards, we got rid of those mines on our own and gave the price of demining.
I told them it will not be possible for me to visit it..I may visit any other country in Europe but not Italy.. I will not visit it because there is vengeance between us and it ..I told them that I prefer that the enmity continues until a generation of Libyans are able to take revenge from Italy. All we had been able to do thus far is evict you ..to demand the whereabouts of exiles and the removal of landmines but the issue of refuge we leave it to future generations.
The Italians say" we are neighbours we are facing one another on the Mediterranean..Italy wants to correct its mistakes .. we let us be friends..we said we will not accept ..this is a revenge that will stand out ..we named 7th October the Day of Vengeance and deliberately expelled the Italians on the same day they invaded ..that day we still commemorate every year.
I personally wrote a story for a film called "injustice" or "Years of suffering" still being made, to show the Italian people the suffering endured by the Libyan people.
They said there was a treaty made in 1956 with the Kingdom of Libya and closed the subject .. Shameful thing: They paid about one million dinars or some thing like that. The Italians and the Libyans agents who were ruling in 56 . they ended every thing and they said we forgive you.. If only they mentioned the exiled or asked to remove mines since there were mines at that time , but none of that happened.
We have become - in fact - in big problem and discussion with them and we imposed sanctions on Italian companies , we made sanctions - those at the General People's Committee are the ones who know more about that - while the Italians were worried and asked to lift these sanctions on Italian companies.
Abdu-Rahman .. Clarify the sanctions imposed on Italian companies ?
____________Intervention by Abdul Rahman Shalgam, Secretary of GPC for Foreign Liaison and International Cooperation :
" The Revolution's Command Council issued in 1970 a law stating that no Italian company has the right to register or work in Libya or renew its registration or given a license except by a decree by the Cabinet at that time and afterwards this authorization was transferred to General People's Committee.
In accordance with that , any Italian company - as I said - in order to register or work in Libya must be referred to Secretary of GPC for Foreign Liaison and International Cooperation and the Secretary of GPC for Economy in order to review and study that case by case , then transferred to General People's Committee to grant license while other companies of any other nationality in the world were to register at GPC for Economy and carry out its works.
The Leader: Those were restrictions on Italian companies. They asked to lift those restrictions; we told them that we could not lift those restrictions before the problem between us and them was settled.
Actually, if the problem had not been settled, the relations between Italy and Libya would have been turned into hostile relations.
Of course Italy and Libya are in need of each other; at least Italy is need of Libya. As you know, the Libyan gas is exported to Italy and the Libyan oil is exported to Italy and the other European countries through submarine pipes connecting Libya and Italy; Italy has big interests in Libya.
It we go back to boycott, the matter would be disaster for Italy; we have threatened with this; we told them: if this files is not closed, we will bring relations to zero; they say: Why? we are friends of yours; we are with you in all international arenas, in the UN and others; this means Italy has never been against Libya; it feels regret for the past and for what Italian colonialists did.
In the year 1998, in the period of Prodi, we reached a Libyan-Italian Joint Declaration which recognized compensation; we told them to compensate the Libyan people and offer apology, but that was not put into implementation and was subject to procrastination by both sides; it was not serious.
After tens of years elapsed since the declaration, nothing has changed; accordingly, we had to reconsider relation; procrastination is not acceptable; there should be either commitment, recognition of compensation and apology; and hence good relations or the relation must be ended.
All this conflict resulted in the treaty that we signed yesterday - Treaty and not agreement - '' Treaty of Friendship Partnership and Cooperation between Libyan Jamahiriya and the Italian Republic'' .
Of course, this treaty were not read to you in full and it is not published , but you only heard about its content.. At the beginning it talks about '' political equality '' , in other words every country respects the other one .. Italy respects Libya and Libya respects Italy . Each country is free in its policies; in other words no one has the right to intervene , and not to resort to threat or use of force.. In other words, Italy does not use force against Libya and vice- versa and to ensure that force is not to be used between the two countries or colonialism and non- intervention in any form in the internal affairs of the state.
The important thing in this article is respect of the principles of international legitimacy, so Italy will not use or allow the use of its territories in any hostile action against Libya.
This is very important and it has been under long discussion in order to be included in the treaty and they said : '' We, Italy guarantee and pledge not to commit an aggression on Libya '' . We told them this is not enough .. They said How come not enough ? We told them because in 86 aggression against Libyan territories had come from Italy . They said it was not Italy , it came from America . We said , what is the use that you guarantee that no one will use you against Libya . What we want is that you ensure that neither America nor NATO are to use Italian territories against Libya.
After a long discussion we told them, then we would not make a treaty or reach any result ... Leave revenge to future generations and hostile relation remain better that aborting it.
This was article ( 4 ) '' In respect of principles of international legitimacy, Italy will not use or allow the use of its territories in any aggression against Libya and Libya will not use or allow the use of its territories in any hostile action against Italy '' .
This was the important article that Italy does not allow, according to this treaty even others to use its territories against Libya like what happened in the year 86.
Why did we strike the Island of Lampedusa in 86 ? Because the American Army used it. the American Third Fleet used this island .. the radar and direction station .
Additionally, there is another issue; the issue of "Dialogue of cultures and civilizations" .. That means don't impose your moral conducts on us and tell us to act the way you do; in turn we don't tell you to act the way we do.
Each group of people has its own culture, religion and traditions which must be respected. What we see now is that the west with America at the top is imposing it conducts on the third world. "If they walk body naked in streets, we have to do the same; otherwise they say we are backward or they won't make deals with us" .. they tell us to form parties, or they won't deal with us; so that they make parties against us; the tell us to carry out elections, or they won't deal with us.. They say they don't accept those crimes. They are some things in Quran and Islam which they said they don't accept them; Europe does not recognize these things; you have to change them if you want to be civilized"
Now, they impose several things on other countries .. they want interfere in the Islamic Sharia, Awqaf (endowment) and also the faith, the same way they impose on the gulf states and those regions. They interfere into Quran, faith, Hajj (Pilgrimage) and Zakat (alms).
They said no one can offer zakat to anybody else; this anybody else can be a terrorist and works for Bin Laden .. Zakat must be given to the government, if you want to offer Zakat. You know what they did with the spouse of the Saudi ambassador. She offered a person a Zaka of two thousand dollars; they said: How come you gave that person that money. That person could a Bin Laden's follower, a terrorist? You had to offer the two thousand dollars to the Saudi government, then the government can decide to whom it may give.
Then came the closure of the file of the past ..in which Italy pledged to compensate..but as I told you yesterday nothing could compensate the blood of our fathers and the Italian occupation of Libya.
This the reality ..if someone offered to be a friend of you ..if he did this in good faith and you have recovered what he had taken from you then you might say yes we can be friends behave as equals.
The Italian compensation pledge was meant to consolidate the principle that he who colonize must stand to account for his act..this will be a new precedent in international law that will help prevent repeat of colonialism.
Apology and compensation was meant to condemn colonialism .. to condemn the occupation of Libya and indeed occupation anywhere and anytime..it is a condemnation of the colonial project as a failure As far as we are concerned we are in no need for money from Italy or elsewhere ..we are in a strong position ..but we look for a new rule a new precedent in international law.
In this treaty Italy pledges - of course when it is approved by Italian Parliament and by Libyan People's Congresses , it becomes effective- to pay a quarter of a billion Dollars yearly for 20 years to come .
In other words, Italy for 20 years will pay the Libyan people a quarter billion every year > this is a good thing, if a poor country it is very important , but for us we are not interested in the material aspect, but what is important for us is to apply the new rule and that is colonialism must compensate the colonized peoples.
For 20 years Italy will carry out projects by building hundreds of houses at its expense in the areas destroyed by mines and by granting undergraduate and graduate scholarships for ( 100 ) Libyan students, renewable every time students finish their studies another ( 100 ) students will be sent instead and all these scholarships are funded by Italy.
Then, Libyans that can not be treated at the hospital that Italy Built in Benghazi for transplant and rehabilitation of the disabled as a result of mines and which was funded by Italy and which came as part of the declaration done in 98 that Italy builds a Medical Center in Benghazi for transplanting parts cut by mines - So those who can not be treated at the center in Benghazi are to be transferred to Italy for treatment at Italy's expense .
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