MRN

The aspiration of the Media Review Network is to dispel the myths and stereotypes about Islam and Muslims and to foster bridges of understanding among the diverse people of our country. The Media Review Network believes that Muslim perspectives on issues impacting on South Africans are a prerequisite to a better appreciation of Islam.

Un can’t define terror

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

(source: Al Jazeera)

When Israeli commandos killed nine mostly Turkish activists during a raid on a flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid to Palestinians last May, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the attack as a prime example of “state terrorism”. “Even tyrants, bandits and pirates have their own rules of ethics,” he said, but not terrorists killing on behalf of a UN member state.

And when several internationally renowned artists, including the rock band Pixies and British rocker Elvis Costello, responded by cancelling scheduled concerts in Tel Aviv, Shuki Weiss, one of Israel’s leading promoters, called the growing boycott movement “cultural terrorism”.

“Music and politics should not mix,” he said, even as the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel was picking up steam.

Perhaps not surprisingly, a UN Ad Hoc Committee to Eliminate Terrorism, created by the General Assembly back in December 1996, has remained deadlocked as it tries to reach agreement on a comprehensive draft convention to eliminate terrorism. Last month, it made another unsuccessful effort at drawing a distinction between “freedom fighters” and “state sponsored terrorism”.

“One knows terrorism when one sees it,” said Ambassador Palitha Kohona of Sri Lanka, a former chief of the UN Treaty Section. The draft convention, tabled in 2001 by India, has won agreement by several delegations to a substantial extent. However, it is bogged down on a few crucial issues. For example, it has been proposed by some that state sponsored terrorism or certain acts of states be covered by the draft, Kohona said.

The mideast nuclear dilemma

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

By Robert Grenier

(source: Voice of the Cape fm Online)

The year, as I recall, was 1994. The setting: a small, discreet restaurant in Herzliya, a northern suburb of Tel Aviv. During dinner with an Israeli official, I expressed the opinion that all efforts to deny weapons of mass destruction to so-called rogue Middle Eastern regimes, whether through sanctions, embargoes or otherwise, could at best be considered delaying actions.

Given the inexorable spread of technology, those countries wishing to acquire such weapons and their means of delivery eventually would do so. The only purpose of delay, then, was to create time for diplomacy, which alone could provide a long-term solution.

To my surprise, the official agreed. Of course, what I had in mind was the near-term negotiation of a genuinely verifiable Middle East nuclear weapons-free zone. Precisely what he had in mind, he did not elaborate.

As it happens, the following year, 1995, the Review and Extension Conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) passed a resolution, co-sponsored by the US, in favour of establishment of a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East. The US only agreed to this resolution, however, as the necessary price for an extension of the NPT, and rejected in the process any language referring to Israel’s nuclear weapons programme.

America really doesnt care about injustice in the middle east

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

By Robert Fisk

(source: Independent.co.uk)

I came to the latest uproarious US diplomatic history with the deepest cynicism. And yesterday, in the dust of post-election Cairo the Egyptian parliamentary poll was as usual a mixture of farce and fraud, which is at least better than shock and awe I ploughed through so many thousands of American diplomatic reports with something approaching utter hopelessness. After all, they do quote President Hosni Mubarak as saying that “you can forget about democracy,” don’t they?

It’s not that US diplomats don’t understand the Middle East; it’s just that they’ve lost all sight of injustice. Vast amounts of diplomatic literature prove that the mainstay of Washington’s Middle East policy is alignment with Israel, that its principal aim is to encourage the Arabs to join the American-Israeli alliance against Iran, that the compass point of US policy over years and years is the need to tame/bully/crush/oppress/ ultimately destroy the power of Iran.

There is virtually no talk (so far, at least) of illegal Jewish colonial settlements on the West Bank, of Israeli “outposts”, of extremist Israeli “settlers” whose homes now smallpox the occupied Palestinian West Bank of the vast illegal system of land theft which lies at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian war. And incredibly, all kinds of worthy US diplomats grovel and kneel before Israel’s demands many of them apparently fervent supporters of Israel as Mossad bosses and Israel military intelligence agents read their wish-list to their benefactors.

There’s a wonderful moment in the cables when the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, explains to a US congressional delegation on 28 April last year that “a Palestinian state must be demilitarised, without control of its airspace and electro-magnetic field [sic], and without the power to enter into treaties or control its border”. Well goodbye, then, to the “viable” (ergo Lord Blair of Isfahan) Palestinian state we all supposedly want. And the US Congress lads and ladies appear to have said nothing.

Thoughts on germany Palestine

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

“. . . we are allowed to criticise specific Israeli policies like attacks on Gaza etc but we are not allowed to criticise the ideology (Zionism) behind these policies.”

By Mazin Qumsiyeh

(source: http://www.qumsiyeh.org/thoughtsongermanyandpalestine/)

The conference in Stuttgart about Palestine was themed “Separated in the past, together in the future”, was sold-out, and had some high powered speakers and lots of energy [1]. We listened, spoke, networked, bought each others’ books, ate, hugged, cried, and laughed. I mostly spent lots of time in thinking; maybe because of waiting at airports or because such conferences give us opportunity to reflect or whatever. Thoughts are a mixed blessing. In that labyrinth of neurons firing sometimes uncontrollably, we are transported to the past, to the present, to the future, whipsawed by40and stories and sounds and smells. The one minute I am thinking of my delay of three hours at the bridge to Jordan while Israeli Shin Bet agents scurry around trying to figure out what to do about me. I reflect on my angered indignation verbalised twice to a young white clean-cut guy (maybe Russian?). Did I challenge him too much or was it too little?

In visiting Germany one cannot help but reflect on history. The thoughts are transported to periods before I was born, periods in history and facts I have read and verified and contrast with myths that are taught daily to unsuspecting publics. Germany lives in the modern presence but the mist of a heavy and dark past moves all around, sometimes getting thick and blurring visions. Some people pump such smoke trying to convince Germans and themselves that this is that mist emanating from a relevant past. We think and speak of how best to explain to Germans that guilt feelings are misdirected. How do we explain the Nazi-Zionist collaborations and the horrors that happened because of a misunderstanding of what really happened nearly seven decades ago [2]. But most of all I reflect on both how good people can be and how much evil they can do. After all, what makes an Ilan Pappe, brilliant professor, humanist who shed all his tribal borders and moved to touch his humanity? And what makes an Ehud Barak, a war criminal with blood of thousands on his hands?

Not in my name is the message that a brilliant Jewish German woman (Evelyn Hecht-Galinski) gave in her speech. Her clarion voice echoed those of prophets speaking to decadent kings of the past, articulating in passionate moral clarity what horror awaits if they stay their destructive course. As human beings, we cannot choose to stand on the sideline while a grave injustice is being committed. We cannot stand by and watch as Western governments succumb to lobbies and send weapons and money that are used to commit horrific crimes. As citizens of those countries we cannot be silent. I listen to Evelyn’s words (translated from German to English) and to the tone of her strong voice and determined looks that penetrate to the hearts of a mesmerised audience. I think this is what decency and courage look like.