Anti-MEMRI

Laura Mills has kindly translated this article by Khalid Saghiyyah per my recommendation. I call what Laura and Saja are doing "the anti-MEMRI" because provide opinions that will never be translated by MEMRI which is busy translating obscure articles in Saudi sleaze websites and in the mouthpieces of various Saudi princes. Is the honey moon between House of Zion and House of Saud not touching?

"Hamas, Abu al-Gheet, and Other Things

Khalid Saghiyyah

In spite of everything, the massacres of Gaza are still influencing concerns against Hamas, loaded with the implied or overt responsibility over what has happened and what is happening. The same thing happened with Hizbullah in 2006. But the experience of Hamas is more bitter. For the movement of Palestinian resistance won in the legislative elections, and the Palestinian people chose it to form their government. However, the democratic rise of Hamas to power was confronted with the rejection of Israel, and the “international community.” For the movement resisted isolation and attempts to overthrow it and assassinate a number of its leaders, before a complete siege was imposed on the Gaza Strip.

It’s not the first time that the results imposed by democracy have been treated with hostility. Previously, this happened in Algeria, for example. Voices were raised, including prominent secular intellectuals, to prohibit the rise to power of the Islamists, on the pretext that they rose to power through democratic means. But (?)

And these proud secularists didn’t comprehend that, with this fatwa, they were behaving the same way. That is, they were prohibiting democracy when it used a system outside the tradition of liberalism. For if the Islamists were concerned with the lack of acceptance of others, liberal “tolerance” had its limits: you can be free within a limited playing field of your freedom.

In the case of Hamas, the wickedness was multiplied. For they took turns, the democratically victorious movement, its political rival, and the occupation (now the same thing). For Mahmoud Abbas thought that at this moment, that he could lead Fatah to wherever he wants, and that Fatah can lead the whole Palestinian people to wherever it wants. The glory of Fatah was not crushed by defeat. For Fatah colluded with Israel in representing its differences with Hamas as if it was a problem with its ideologies, not with its political program. As if Hamas was punished because of its hostility towards some of the (?) of Western liberalism, not because of its embrace of resistance. And this project has had good marketing, for a number of writers have adopted and justified this intellectually, forgetting all of a sudden, their rejoicing at the following democratic assault by American planes, to turn against democracy on the pretext of defending (the right?) of liberalism.

And the reality is that democracy, (contrary to what is well-known), a lot is sacrificed to it in the way of liberalism. This matter isn’t limited to the countries of the Third World, but maybe it was the industrialized countries who were more likely to resort to suspending democracy in defense of the (right) of the liberal West. Let’s take the matter of the veil, for example. For it was cut off from the realm of personal freedom, to enter the realm of the right of the state in France for example (without bounds). As for Turkey, where the vehement popular refusal of many of the secular exaggerations, for democracy stops at the borders of (the right of) liberalism.

In past times, there was a mixture of democracy and the free market and the West or (the right of) Western liberalism. And if this combination of democracy and the free market was strange in the continuation of the existence of monopolies that was obvious to everyone, for Western supremacy could induce governments of the Third World or coerce them to open their markets. Like those who open their countries to the modern age and progress and (the right of) enlightenment. For the international financial crisis removed paper (?) from this non-regional connection between the absence of control over markets and democracy. For the financial markets and the handful controlling them was as far as could be from democracy. And in the same context, there was no connection between the West and the spread of real democracy at any time. For most of the totalitarian systems were set up/installed by the U.S. But, another time, the imperial project and its spokesmen were able to deceive us. For in the face of the sight of the collapse of the statue of Saddam Hussein (?) the liberals who started by rejoicing at the vision of Bush for democracy coming through bombing campaigns.

Thus Mahmoud Abbas (and before him Fouad Abd-al-Basat Seniora) seems to be guardian of Western (values) in confronting Islamic fundamentalism more than defending the rights of the Palestinian people who he’s supposed to be representing. At least, this is what is revealed by his cold public statements whenever his people are slaughtered. And that is what makes Olmert repeat with insolence that “Israel isn’t waging war against the Palestinian people in Gaza, because they are not our enemies, and they are also victims of violent and bloody (?) (practiced by) terrorist organizations.” Not the Israeli occupation then. Not political differences then. Indeed, it’s the terrorist beast (read Islamic) that we should unite against!

That was enough for the martyr Nazar Rayyan to make him become a fighter against the occupation, to become a man with a long beard, and defender of polygamy. And that is enough for the Israeli air bombing to be brutal, and it is enough to kill him for them to be victims and martyrs, for it becomes a sacrifice for the battle of progress that “makes suitcases out of the skin of a cow.”

But, of course, Ahmed Abu al-Gheet has another analysis. For he announced in a television interview that President Hosni Mubarak, when he heard that Israel was thinking of a military operation against Gaza, said “Give me six (?)days.” And on the next day, Tzipi Livni came to Cairo."