Category: Published Articles

Demonization of Islam, Palestinian Statehood

By N Oji Mzilikazi

(Originally published in Montreal Community Contact Volume 21, Number 20)

September 29, 2011

In typical right-wing media propaganda style, the Montreal Gazette of August 10, 2011, carried the story, “Islamic extremists seek to use U.K. riots as distraction for terror attack.”

Commonsense dictates a better and more efficient tactic would be for those “extremists” to use the riots to plunge England into a race war.

Given that adherents to Islam exist in the wide spectrum of ethnicity; radical Muslims who are Black attacking whites, especially in known bigoted and racist enclaves, and Muslims who are whites attacking Blacks would be more devastating to the country than launching a terror attack during a riot.

The ensuing mayhem will most certainly fulfill Enoch Powell 1968 apocalyptic vision of “rivers of blood.” Furthermore, none would have reason to point fingers at the Muslim community should something like that occur.

The fear-mongering article is a common tact. Regardless as to whatever dramatic events are unfolding in any part of the world, and even in the face of negatives affecting the economy, the trust of pro-Zionist agents is to keep the spotlight on “Islamic terrorism” – the bogeyman of all bogeymen thereby ensuring undying support to Israel.

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, stated that “Islamicism” is the biggest threat to Canada. Anti-terrorism clauses jettisoned in 2007 would be back on the books.

Harper has repeatedly shown his default position is Israel can do no wrong. Thus the state and Israeli interests benefit from 100 per cent Canadian government support.

Though every nation has a right to determine its own destiny, when it comes to Palestine that ideology is positioned as inapplicable.

In 2006 the Palestinian electorate elected a Hamas-led government. Canada along with other western donor nations decided to withhold their funds. Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter told Canadians in a December 2006 CBC exclusive interview, “to punish the Palestinian people because they voted for their candidates of choice” is criminal.

On August 16, 2007, U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns signed a deal providing Israel with $30bn of military aid over the next 10 years. Burns called the aid package an investment in peace. Interestingly, when Ottawa decided to restore $8m in aid to the Palestinian government in July 2007, a great many objected.

In an act of spinelessness, thoughts towards seeking another term, and fear of further political erosion by American Jews, Obama who supported and praised uprisings in the Arab world, threatened a US veto should Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas make a bid for Palestinian statehood at the United Nations.

Last week at the opening of the UN general assembly in New York, Obama said that negotiations between Israel and Palestinians, and not Security Council resolutions were the way to go. Must Palestine ask Israel for statehood?

Harper has already detailed that Canada will oppose the upcoming bid for Palestinian statehood at the United Nations.

I have no bone in the fight between Israel and Palestine, or the larger Arab/Muslim world. Both Jews and Arabs have exploited, oppressed, and discriminated against me and mines; Africa/Africans/Blacks, and continue to do so, even when we belong to their religion.

Still, right is right. Palestinians deserve statehood; just as no person or nation should ever voice denial of Israel’s right to exist, much more execute acts to destroy her.

Islam and Judaism both preach one God and one faith, but if you are Black, it seems only the devil has your back.

In a June 1996 story carried in the Gazette, Israel’s Central Blood Bank disclosed that for years it was accepting blood from their Ethiopian Jews, but unbeknown to them were throwing it all away.

In response to a series of demonstrations in December 2007 by Ethiopian Jews against racism, discrimination at city schools and kindergartens, Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stated, “Ethiopian Jews’ feeling that they have been wronged is not detached from reality, a reality that we must change.”

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was blunt – “There is an entire phenomenon of pure racism in the hiring of Ethiopian immigrants in the job market and the renting of homes to them.” (Haaretz, 9/12/07)

Since Blacks Jews are themselves victims of Jewish racism, when it comes to people of African descent, Zionism and racism are blood brothers.

Black Africans and Muslim Africans in Libya are presently being murdered with impunity – deaths are in the hundreds. The uprising against Muammar Gaddafi has brought centuries-old Arab anti-Black racism to the fore.

Arabs raided, and waged wars in Africa for slaves as a commodity long before the birth of Islam. The Arabic/Moslem East African Slave Trade existed centuries before Europe’s Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.

Though Arabs/Moslems enjoyed the African females they enslaved at will; enslaved African males were castrated. Thus the miniscule “Black Arab” population in Islamic lands, given the millions of Africans they carted away.

The United Nations resolution 418 of 4 November 1977 imposed a mandatory arms embargo against the evil and wicked Apartheid regime of South Africa. No nation was to supply products, technologies and services that could be used for its military and nuclear industry.

No doubt spurred by diamonds, Israel saw South Africa as kindred spirit – a white minority surrounded by Blacks, just as she was surrounded by Arabs and a Persian state.  Their experience with Nazism be damned- Israel openly funnelled arms and technology to the state.

In collaborating with South Africa, Israel supported state sponsored and state sanctioned terrorism against Black South Africans. Declassified documents published in May 2010 revealed that Israel even offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime.

Interestingly, Israel’s army of defenders will attack anyone, pen missives to editors and bombard online forums to get at any who dare associate or equate the practices and policies of its government in respect to Palestine with Apartheid.

Just earlier this year, Israeli interests sought to have funding of Toronto’s Pride Festival by the city revoked, over the participation of the activist group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA). They also wanted the term “Israeli apartheid” condemned as hate speech, so subject to prosecutions under the Criminal Code.

In March 2006, the Canadian Jewish Congress succeeding in getting “Three Wishes: Palestinian and Israeli Children Speak” by Canadian author Deborah Ellis pulled by some of Ontario school boards and school libraries.

Though they claimed it was too sophisticated for children in Grades 4-6, it was about the protection of image. They didn’t want Canadian children reading those stories for fear they might be sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, and for references to Israeli brutality by some of its subjects.

After all, a nation and people that manipulate victimization and made a business out of it must “show” outrage if spoken about as an oppressor or engaging in Apartheid.

Peaceful protest interrupting speech on university campuses has been going on for decades. On September 23, a jury in Orange County, California found 10 Muslim students guilty of conspiring and then disrupting a February 2010 speech at UC Irvine by Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the United States.

The bringing of such a silly lawsuit before the courts was to serve as a lesson to critics of Israel. “We will use to law to tie you up -make you spend money over your words.”

The unexpected verdict was more than a blow to a guaranteed civil right- the freedom of free speech. It points to the extent some will go to appease Israeli interests, as well as affirm that some are more equal than others.

That being said, for all the evils ascribe to Gaddafi, and the gloating by Harper of the amount of bombs Canada dropped to destabilise Libya, my Africaness thanks Gaddafi for the military and financial support he gave to liberation movements across Black Africa, and the financial/educational assistance to some folks in the Caribbean.