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.

Libya the enigma of its revolution in western hands

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

By Iqbal Jassat – Chairman, Media Review Network

As Libya and its beleaguered leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi occupy center stage with news coverage being dominated by an American-led military offensive targeting his forces and weapons, a huge debate on it has emerged in many capitals of the world. Apart from the vexing issue of whether military strikes have transgressed the limited mandate of the UN’s security council resolution, there is also divided opinion as to whether the Americans must continue leading the military coalition or hand command over to NATO. With the war on Libya now about to enter a second week, it does appear that Gaddafi’s determination to fight to the last and his appeal on friends in the international community not to ditch him seems to be working for the “brother leader”.

Divisions in the rank of member states of the UN reveal at the outset how certain influential countries abstained from endorsing the resolution. These states, Brazil, Russia, China and India set the tone for further polarization which saw Latin American countries adopting a harsher and more critical approach to the war. It is true too that Gaddafi has been lobbying via telephone calls to a wide array of friends, supporters and business partners around the world, not to gain their sympathy but to exploit weaknesses in the fragile coalition. His four decades of autocratic rule and grand display of solidarity for causes such as the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa has endeared him to many people, particularly in Africa.

It explains his bravado whereby revelations such as claiming that President Zuma had pledged support to him in a private telephonic conversation are made without blinking an eye. Though the Zuma government disputes Gaddafi’s version, it doesn’t deny that a conversation did take place between the two. So while confusion reigns in diplomatic circles about what may have been said or not, Gaddafi rides the storm by attacking his opponents as “terrorists”.

Abolish Africas artificial boundries imposed by west

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

By Firoz Osman – Media Review Network

(source: Star Newspaper, Mon 28/03/2011, Pg13)

In her trenchant piece on the conflict in the Ivory Coast “ Africa is back to bowing to West”, Christine Qunta bemoans the fact that “African leaders are back to being summoned to Washington, Paris and London to take instructions on how to act as protectors of Western interests on this continent.” (The Star, 23/03/2011).

French-backed Allassane Ouattara and incumbent Laurent Gbagbo both claim to have won the democratic elections, threatening to plunge the country into a civil war. Opportunists will exploit the toxic issue of tribalism, given that Ouattara is from the Dioula ethnic group and Gbagbo, a Bete, consider Ouattara from the north as “foreigners” or immigrants.

The previously colonised world in Africa and Asia will never be free from this vicious cycle of internecine conflict and war until it reverts to a form of governance that preceded colonialism. The democratic, nation-state is no panacea. Historians note that it was a meeting at the Berlin residence of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1884, that the foreign ministers of fourteen European powers and the United States of America established ground rules for the future exploitation of the “dark continent.”

Goldstones shameful u turn

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

By Ilan Pappe

(source: Electronic Intifada)

“If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone report would have been a different document.” Thus opens Judge Richard Goldstone’s much-discussed op-ed in The Washington Post. I have a strong feeling that the editor might have tampered with the text and that the original sentence ought to have read something like: “If I had known then that the report would turn me into a self-hating Jew in the eyes of my beloved Israel and my own Jewish community in South Africa, the Goldstone report would never have been written at all.” And if that wasn’t the original sentence, it is certainly the subtext of Goldstone’s article.

This shameful U-turn did not happen this week. It comes after more than a year and a half of a sustained campaign of intimidation and character assassination against the judge, a campaign whose like in the past destroyed mighty people such as US Senator William Fulbright who was shot down politically for his brave attempt to disclose AIPAC’s illegal dealings with the State of Israel.

Already In October 2009, Goldstone told CNN, “I’ve got a great love for Israel” and “I’ve worked for many Israeli causes and continue to do so” (Video: “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” 4 October 2009). Given the fact that at the time he made this declaration of love he did not have any new evidence, as he claims now, one may wonder how could this love could not be at least weakened by what he discovered when writing, along with other members of the UN commission, his original report.

But worse was to come and exactly a year ago, in April 2010, the campaign against him reached new heights, or rather, lows. It was led by the chairman of the South African Zionist Federation, Avrom Krengel, who tried to prevent Goldstone from participating in his grandson’s bar mitzvah in Johannesburg since “Goldstone caused irreparable damage to the Jewish people as a whole.”

The South African Zionist Federation threatened to picket outside the synagogue during the ceremony. Worse was the interference of South Africa’s Chief Rabbi, Warren Goldstein, who chastised Goldstone for “doing greater damage to the State of Israel.” Last February, Goldstone said that “Hamas perpetrated war crimes, but Israel did not,” in an interview that was not broadcast, according to a 3 April report the website of Israel’s Channel 2. It was not enough: the Israelis demanded much more.

Report claims that dahlan supplied gaddafi with Isaraeli weapons

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

(source: Middle East Monitor.org.uk)

Former Fatah leader Muhammad Dahlan was one of a number of Palestinians “

involved in a deal to supply weapons from Israel to Muammar Gaddafi.

A report in the Algerian newspaper Al-Shuruq claims that the former Fatah leader Muhammad Dahlan was one of a number of Palestinians “involved in a deal to supply weapons from Israel to Muammar Gaddafi”. The secret deal was facilitated using a ship which sailed from Greece. The source for the information was Libyan dissident Omar El-Khadraoui.

In a communiqué to Al-Shururq from the Libya-Tunisia border on Sunday, El-Khadraoui said, “The former leader of the Fatah movement, Muhammad Dahlan, and someone known as ‘Muhammad Rashid’, a Kurd from Iraq whose real name is Khalid Salam and who used to be an advisor to the late Yasser Arafat, are behind a deal to supply internationally proscribed weapons to Colonel Gaddafi, who used them to shell civilians in Misrata in western Libya.”

Mr. El-Khadraoui, who is part of the revolutionary political leadership in Libya, confirmed that the ‘Muhammad Rashid’ accompanied the ship carrying the Israeli weapons from Greece to the port of Tripoli; he added that the revolutionaries in Misrata were able to loot some of the shipment. Al-Jazeera news channel broadcast footage of these weapons, which included cluster bombs marked with the Star of David, an emblem of Israel and the Jews.

“Colonel Gaddafi expresses antipathy toward Israel but in reality the closest of links bind him to Israel via Muhammad Dahlan, the former Minister of Security for the Palestinian Authority,” said El-Khadraoui.

Dahlan is accused by Hamas and many from within Fatah itself, of being involved in unsavoury dealings which, claims El-Khadraoui, include “a mafia network to smuggle weapons from Israeli companies, including weapons which are proscribed internationally”.