Sara Ocidental: O risco de guerra com Marrocos está «bem presente»

Tifariti – Mohamed Abdelaziz, secretário-geral da Frente Polisário e presidente da Republica Árabe Saraui Democrática (RASD) declarou à PNN que o reinício da guerra com Marrocos «é um risco bem presente».
«Esta situação nem de guerra nem de paz começa a ser insuportável» afirmou à PNN um militar da Frente Polisário que participou nas guerras da década de 70 e 80. «Dêem-nos armas que vamos chegar até Rabat (capital de Marrocos)» disse enervado um jovem da Polisário que nunca conheceu a costa Atlântica do Sara Ocidental ocupado por Marrocos.

Depois de 17 anos de tréguas, que deveria para permitir à ONU de preparar um referendo neste território maioritariamente desértico, após o fracasso de quatro «rounds» de negociações directas entre a Polisário e Marrocos com a mediação das Nações Unidas, o clima de tensão dispara junto dos sarauis instalados nos campos de refugiados no triângulo fronteiriço argelino de Tindouf. Os jovens querem «regressar às armas», os veteranos ainda acreditam na diplomacia mas compreendem a posição da juventude.

Quando se pretende consolidar a União do Magrebe Árabe (UMA) e criar alicerces para a União pelo Mediterrâneo (UPM), o espectro do retorno à guerra nesta zona ocidental do Magrebe começa a atingir o cume da tensão com um cenário de abrasamento na encruzilhada das fronteiras do Sara Ocidental, Marrocos, Mauritânia e Argélia.

«A paciência tem limites» afirmou Mohamed Abdelaziz à PNN: «O retomar das hostilidades é um risco bem presente. É uma opção que pretendemos evitar, mas confirmo que o regresso à guerra é uma opção real e para a qual nós estamos a preparar, caso sejamos obrigados no quadro de uma politica de defesa legitima» disse reconhecendo que a Polisário manifestou à ONU ainda estar disposta a negociar com Marrocos, todavia Ban Ki Moon, secretario geral das Nações Unidas, «ainda não designou os mediadores nem disse o que vai fazer», além da data do V round das negociações permanecer ainda uma incógnita.

Para Mohamed Abdelaziz existem contudo sinais de esforços da comunidade internacional e realçou que o Parlamento Europeu «mencionou a necessidade de resolver o problema do Sara Ocidental assente no respeito do direito internacional e do povo do saraui, e alertou também o presidente francês, Nicolas Sarkozy, que a UPM deve ter em consideração a existência deste problema próximo do Mediterrâneo. Espero que o problema do Sara Ocidental seja resolvido antes da criação da UPM» sublinhou o secretário-geral da Frente Polisário.

POVOAR O DESERTO

Após 17 anos de tréguas e cessar-fogo a Frente Polisário decidiu, durante o congresso de Dezembro de 2007, desenvolver a chamadas «zonas libertadas» que permaneceram também num impasse de desenvolvimento devido ao receio de eventuais bombardeamentos e ataques das forças marroquinas. «O congresso decidiu de construir nas zonas livres do Sara Ocidental enquanto espera pela solução final do problema» confirmou Mohamed Abdelaziz à PNN. «Tifariti é uma localidade que se encontra nos territórios livres do Sara Ocidental. Além de Tifariti, as localidades de Bir Lahlo, Mehairiz, Bir Tiblissit, Mijek, Agghouinit, Dougue e Zoug» estão também abrangidas pelo programa de desenvolvimento.

«Hoje existem, de uma forma geral, nómadas em toda a região que estão ligados a estas localidades onde se abastecem de água, carburantes, bens e tratamentos, dado que já aí existem hospitais e dispensários», explicou o secretário-geral da Polisário: «estamos a elaborar um projecto desenvolvimento desta região, onde, Tifariti é o ponto mais interessante e a prioridade dado que geograficamente é uma localidade que tem muitas condições favoráveis além de ser um ponto estratégico. Tifariti já dispõe de um hospital, escola, estão em curso a construção de habitações, colocamos a primeira pedra para a construção de uma mesquita, um parlamento, uma barragem, um estádio e pensamos na construção de um aeroporto».

PORTUGAL COMO EXEMPLO

A acção portuguesa pela independência de Timor-Leste é sempre citada pela Frente Polisário como o exemplo que a Espanha (antiga potencia colonial no Sara Ocidental) deveria seguir. «Portugal é um país do sul da Europa que tem relações com a nossa região, quer dizer com o Magrebe, é um país que tem uma boa experiencia da descolonização, principalmente o caso de Timor Oriental, daí espero que Portugal tenha um papel semelhante no Sara Ocidental como teve em Timor» considerou Mohamed Abdelaziz, prosseguindo: «é um país interessante, influente na Europa e no quadro nas Nações Unidas, assim convido Portugal a defender o referendo livre no Sara Ocidental que permita a descolonização do nosso país, para que possamos, nós e a Europa, principalmente a Espanha e Portugal, nos lançarmos numa cooperação mais rentável para todos nós.»

Mohamed Abdelaziz lamentou que Portugal assinasse o acordo de pescas nos territórios marítimos do sara ocidental e considera que Lisboa foi «influenciada por países da UE na assinatura do «acordo ilegal de pescas entre a UE e o Governo de Marrocos, onde encontramos Portugal ao lado da França e da Espanha» acusou o secretario geral da Frente Polisário.

Sara Ocidental: Um Estado à espera de ser Estado

Rabuni – Enquanto aguardam que a ONU exija a aplicação do referendo no Sara Ocidental, todas as estruturas de um Estado independente já funcionam nos campos de refugiados sarauis instalados numa zona desértica do sudoeste argelino.
Um dos melhores argumentos que a Frente Polisário constituiu perante a comunidade internacional para sustentar que está pronta a assumir as rédeas do Sara Ocidental assenta na criação de todas as estruturas de um Estado independente na vasta região próximo de Tinduf, sudoeste argelino, onde vivem cerca de 125 mil refugiados da antiga colónia espanhola. Em 1975 Madrid decidiu abdicar do seu domínio colonial sariano deixando o território à mercê de Marrocos e da Mauritânia que tiveram de fazer face à resistência armada saraui da Frente Polisário, uma história semelhante à ocupação indonésia em Timor.

Um ano após a retirada espanhola a Frente Polisário proclama, a 27 de Fevereiro, na pequena localidade de Bir Lahlo, um oásis situado nos territórios desertos do Sara Ocidental controlados pelo movimento, a independência da RASD (República Árabe Saraui Democrática), onde a omnipresença do movimento de libertação saraui está patente em todas as suas estruturas.

Em poucos anos a RASD tornou-se a arma diplomática mais potente da Polisário. É um Estado semi virtual que conseguiu obter o reconhecimento real como um Estado de direito no seio da Organização da Unidade Africana (OUA), actual União Africana (UA), permitindo-lhe assim a abertura de embaixadas em todos os países que reconheceram a sua legitimidade. Uma gigantesca vitória diplomática da Polisário que precipitou a retirada de Marrocos da OUA. Nos países, como Portugal, que não reconhecem o Estado saraui a Polisário abriu «representações» que funcionam como consulados.

A RASD desenvolve-se nos acampamentos de refugiados na Argélia como um Estado no exílio desde há 33 anos. Teoricamente deveria estar instalada nos territórios controlados pela Polisário, que representam cerca de 30 por cento do Sara Ocidental. Mas, nesta faixa desértica que acompanha a linha de «choque» com os territórios controlados por Marrocos, onde Rabat construiu o maior muro «defensivo» do planeta, vivem apenas cerca de 20 mil sarauis maioritariamente nómadas. Perante as críticas marroquinas que acusavam a Polisário de deixar ao abandono os territórios que controla, o movimento saraui decidiu desenvolver e repovoar esta região, dotando-a de estruturas administrativas fixas e de condições para a sedentarização da população. No entanto, a presença da Polisário permanece essencialmente militar e esta alega que não quer usar a sua população como escudo humano face às tropas marroquinas.

Partindo de Tinduf em direcção aos acampamentos, Rabuni é uma passagem obrigatória. É a «capital» administrativa dos acampamentos e onde se concentra todo aparelho de «Estado». Presidência, Governo, Ministérios dos Negócios Estrangeiros, Defesa, Cooperação, Justiça, Interior, Territórios Ocupados, Saúde e Cultura garantem a gestão dos campos, gerem a ajuda humanitária e elaboram as estratégias diplomáticas a seguir pela Polisário.

Para manter vivo o passado, foram atribuídos aos acampamentos de refugiados os nomes das cidades e localidades do Sara Ocidental controlado por Marrocos, como Layoune, Smara, Awserd ou Dakhla que assumem a designação de «wilayas», ou seja, distritos. Estas são subdivididas em «dairas» (freguesias) que congregam vários bairros que adoptaram também os nomes daqueles que estão nos denominados «territórios ocupados».

Cada «daira» dispõe de um dispensário que depende de um hospital assistido por médicos sarauis, maioritariamente formados em Cuba, que contam com o apoio permanente das representações espanhola e grega da ONG Médicos do Mundo.

Enquanto o sistema de saúde saraui tem conseguido evitar a propagação de epidemias nos campos, os refugiados sarauis são hoje vítimas de reduções drásticas da ajuda alimentar, da qual depende totalmente, consequência das «campanhas de intoxicação marroquinas» que acusam a Polisário de revender as ajuda humanitária na Mauritânia, explicou Salek Baba Hassena, Ministro da Cooperação.

Os sarauis são muçulmanos e encaram a prática religiosa como uma opção individual de cada fiel, rejeitando qualquer forma de integrismo ou fundamentalismo religioso. Esta atitude de tolerância religiosa justifica, segundo dirigentes da Polisário, a retracção no apoio à causa saraui de vários países árabes que preferem alinhar a sua posição por Rabat que decidiu ceder terreno politico aos islamistas como forma de combate ao integrismo.

As mulheres têm um papel vital na organização e gestão dos campos de refugiados, contrariando o hábito da maioria dos países árabes. Além de serem dominantes nos cursos de formação profissional nos acampamentos a presença feminina é também maioritária nos conselhos regionais das «wilayas» e «dairas».

Com o apoio de várias ONG e associações de solidariedade com a questão saraui, são realizados vários eventos invulgares em campos de refugiados como o festival internacional do cinema no Sara Ocidental, a Maratona do Sara, que terá lugar no final de Fevereiro e o festival de «Art Tifariti» que agrupa centenas de participantes de todo mundo. Todos os acampamentos recebem a Rádio Saraui, que dispõe de delegações em cada «wilaya», e em Rabuni já estão instalados os estúdios do futuro canal de televisão saraui, RASD-TV, que pretende ser difundido por satélite para 43 países.

Durante 34 anos de tortuoso exílio os refugiados sarauis souberam transformar o desgaste e a paciência em arma política e diplomática desenvolvendo o primeiro Estado independente virtual com um funcionamento real.

Sara Ocidental: A intifada esquecida

Rabuni – Todos os portugueses conhecem a intifada palestiniana mas a maioria desconhece que no segundo país mais próximo de Portugal, Marrocos, está em curso outra intifada reprimida com extrema violência pelo reino alauita.
«São vocês que têm de explicar porque é que a maior parte dos órgãos de comunicação social não falam na intifada saraui em Marrocos» reage Khalil Sidi M’Hamed, Ministro dos Territórios Ocupados e da Diáspora da República Árabe Saraui Democrática (RASD) quando questionado sobre o silêncio da imprensa internacional face à intifada saraui.

Desencadeada em Maio 2005 por estudantes sarauis da universidade de Rabat, a intifada tornou-se num quebra-cabeças para a monarquia marroquina que tenta abafar a existência de um levantamento saraui nos territórios do Sara Ocidental controlado por Marrocos mas já se estende a todo o país. Uma situação que não passou despercebida à delegação ad hoc do Parlamento Europeu que se deslocou no final de Janeiro a Layoune, como constatou a Amnistia Internacional.

Depois de ter defendido que a Frente Polisário era um movimento terrorista Rabat não hesita em reprimir com extrema violência qualquer manifestação pela autodeterminação do Sara Ocidental, e longe das paradisíacas fotografias turísticas Marrocos vai superlotando as suas prisões (foto) com amontoados de manifestantes acusados de serem perigosos destabilizadores do reino.

Uma concentração de jovens sarauis, a aclamação de um slogan pela autodeterminação ou desenhar clandestinamente uma bandeira da RASD resulta imediatamente numa reacção das forças de segurança marroquinas que multiplicam as detenções arbitrarias e submetem os «revoltosos» a múltiplas torturas frequentemente denunciadas pelas ONG’s internacionais.

As manifestações pacíficas transformaram-se entretanto em acções de resistência, e qualquer sinal de repressão degenera rapidamente numa chuva de pedras contra a polícia de choque marroquina. Imagens que Rabat tenta ocultar mas a Polisário, e os manifestantes sarauis, difundem através da YouTube e Dailymotion.

Qualificando de «guerrilha pacífica» Khalil Sidi M’Hamed afirma que a intifada saraui faz parte da «causa do povo» e da luta da Frente Polisário, «cada indivíduo que está nos campos de refugiados sarauis (na Argélia) tem um electrão na intifada» sublinha. Segundo o Ministro dos Territórios Ocupados e da Diáspora da RASD a acção da intifada provocou que Marrocos impedisse que ONG’s de defesa dos Direitos Humanos se deslocassem ao Sara Ocidental, onde Rabat tenta ocultar «valas comuns com vítimas sarauis».

Para Khalil Sidi M’Hamed a Intifada saraui «é como a Revolução Laranja (Ucrânia)», onde participam todas as camadas sociais, e garante que vai continuar a dilatar e alastrar por todo o território marroquino porque «quando um país está sob ocupação todos tornam-se resistentes».

Marrocos apenas reconhece cinco vítimas mortais da intifada, e a Polisário avança que desde 2005 a acção das forças de segurança marroquinas contra a «guerrilha pacífica» resultou em «centenas de vítimas», entre os mortos, feridos e torturados.

No último relatório da Human Rights Watch foi assinalado que os militantes sarauis e os defensores dos direitos humanos continuam a ser vítimas de «perseguições e assédio perpetrado pelas autoridades marroquinas que tentam desacreditar estes militantes acusando vários de utilizarem os direitos humanos com o pretexto para apoiarem “acções separatistas” da Polisário, por vezes com violência». Segundo a mesma ONG para os manifestantes sarauis a recusa marroquina do direito à autodeterminação é uma violação dos direitos humanos.

Face às pressões internacionais Marrocos foi forçado a levantar a pressão sobre as populações do Sara Ocidental e permitir a circulação dos activistas dos direitos humanos sarauis, os quais acabaram por se tornar nos símbolos da intifada e nos principais embaixadores das denúncias de violações dos direitos humanos praticadas nestes territórios. Foi este quadro que permitiu a Aminatu Haidar, sobrevivente das prisões e torturas marroquinas, se tornar na porta-voz itinerante das populações sarauis nos territórios do Sara Ocidental controlado por Marrocos e recentemente recebeu em Washington o prémio de defensora dos direitos humanos atribuído pelo Centro Robert F. Kennedy.

O bloqueio mediático à Intifada no Sara Ocidental prossegue dado que Marrocos não quer ver manchada a sua proposta de autonomia para o território o qual a Frente Polisário rejeita. Perante o impasse de um cessar-fogo que dura há quase duas décadas, dos fiascos acumulados das negociações entre Rabat e a Polisário sob os auspícios da ONU, e face à indiferença internacional relativamente ao «levantamento saraui» a intifada pode disparar e «tudo é possível acontecer a curto prazo», reconheceu Khalil Sidi M’Hamed.

The politics of bollocks

In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger borrows from Lord West of Spithead to deconstruct current mythology, such as the 'impartiality' of the BBC and the 'radical changes' implemented by President Obama.

Growing up in an Antipodean society proud of its rich variety of expletives, I never heard the word bollocks. It was only on arrival in England that I understood its majesterial power. All classes used it. Judges grunted it; an editor of the Daily Mirror used it as noun, adjective and verb. Certainly, the resonance of a double vowel saw off its closest American contender. It had authority.

A high official with the Gilbertian title of Lord West of Spithead used it to great effect on 27 January. The former admiral, who is security adviser to Gordon Brown, was referring to Tony Blair’s famous assertion that invading countries and killing innocent people did not increase the threat of terrorism at home.

“That was clearly bollocks,” said his lordship, who warned of the perceived “linkage between the US, Israel and the UK” in the horrors inflicted on Gaza and the effect on the recruitment of terrorists in Britain. In other words, he was stating the obvious: that state terrorism begets individual or group terrorism at source. Just as Blair was the prime mover of the London bombings of 7 July 2005, so Brown, having pursued the same cynical crusades in Muslim countries and having armed and disported himself before the criminal regime in Tel Aviv, will share responsibility for related atrocities at home.

There is a lot of bollocks about at the moment.

The BBC’s explanation for banning an appeal on behalf of the stricken people of Gaza is a vivid example. Mark Thompson, the director general, cited the BBC’s legal requirement to be “impartial... because Gaza is a major ongoing news story in which humanitarian issues... are both at the heart of the story and contentious.”

In a letter to Thompson, David Bracewell, illuminated the deceit behind this. He pointed to previous BBC appeals for the Disasters Emergency Committee that were not only made in the midst of “an ongoing news story” in which humanitarian issues were “contentious”, but demonstrated how the BBC took sides. In 1999, at the height of the illegal Nato bombing of Serbia and Kosovo, the TV presenter Jill Dando made an appeal on behalf of Kosovar refugees. The BBC web page for that appeal was linked to numerous articles meant to support the gravity of the humanitarian issue. These included quotations from Blair himself, such as “This will be a daily pounding until [Slobodan Milosevic] comes into line with the terms that Nato has laid down.” There was no significant balance of view from the Yugoslav side, and not a single mention that the flight of Kosovar refugees began only after Nato had started bombing. Similarly, in an appeal for the victims of the civil war in the Congo, the BBC favoured the regime of Joseph Kabila without referring to the Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and other reports accusing his forces of atrocities. In contrast, the rebel leader Nkunda was “accused of committing atrocities” and was ordained the BBC’s bad guy. Kabila, who represented western interests, was clearly the good guy – just like Nato in the Balkans and Israel in the Middle East.

While Mark Thompson and his satraps richly deserve the Lord West of Spithead Bollocks Blue Ribbon, that honour goes to the cheer squad of President Barack Obama, whose cult-like obeisance goes on and on.

On 23 January, the Guardian’s front page declared, “Obama shuts network of CIA ‘ghost prisons’ ”. The “wholesale deconstruction [sic] of George Bush’s war on terror”, said the report, had been ordered by the new president who would be “shutting down the CIA’s secret prison network, banning torture and rendition...”.

The bollocks quotient on this was so high that it read like the press release it was, citing “officials briefing reporters at the White House yesterday”. Obama’s orders, according to a group of 16 retired generals and admirals who attended a presidential signing ceremony, “would restore America’s moral standing in the world”. What moral standing? It never ceases to astonish that experienced reporters can transmit PR stunts like this, bearing in mind the moving belt of lies from the same source under only nominally different management.

Far from “deconstructing [sic] the war on terror”, Obama is clearly pursuing it with the same vigour, ideological backing and deception as the previous administration. George W. Bush’s first war, in Afghanistan, and last war, in Pakistan, are now Obama’s wars – with thousands more US troops to be deployed, more bombing and more slaughter of civilians. On 22 January, the day he described Afghanistan and Pakistan as “the central front in our enduring struggle against terrorism and extremism”, 22 Afghan civilians died beneath Obama’s bombs in a hamlet populated mainly by shepherds and which, by all accounts, had not laid eyes on the Taliban. Women and children were among the dead, which is normal.

Far from “shutting down the CIA’s secret prison network”, Obama’s executive orders actually give the CIA authority to carry out renditions, abductions and transfers of prisoners in secret without the threat of legal obstruction. As the Los Angeles Times disclosed, “current and former intelligence officials said the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role.” A semantic sleight of hand is that “long term prisons” are changed to “short term prisons”; and while Americans are now banned from directly torturing people, foreigners working for the US are not. This means that America’s numerous “covert actions” will operate as they did under previous presidents, with proxy regimes, such as Augusto Pinochet’s in Chile, doing the dirtiest work.

Bush’s open support for torture, and Donald Rumsfeld’s extraordinary personal overseeing of certain torture techniques, upset many in America’s “secret army” of subversive military and intelligence operators as it exposed how the system worked. Obama’s nominee for director of national intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, has said the Army Field Manual may include new forms of “harsh interrogation”, which will be kept secret.

Obama has chosen not to stop any of this. Neither do his ballyhooed executive orders put an end to Bush’s assault on constitutional and international law. He has retained Bush’s “right” to imprison anyone, without trial or charges. No “ghost prisoners” are being released or are due to be tried before a civilian court. His nominee for attorney-general, Eric Holder, has endorsed an extension of Bush’s totalitarian USA Patriot Act, which allows federal agents to demand Americans’ library and bookshop records. The man of “change”, is changing little. That ought to be front page news from Washington.

The Lord West of Spithead Bollocks Prize (Runner-up) is shared. On 28 January, a national Greenpeace advertisement opposing a third runway at London’s Heathrow airport summed up the almost willful naivety that has obstructed informed analysis of the Obama administration. “Fortunately,” declared Greenpeace beneath a God-like picture of Obama, “the White House has a new occupant, and he has asked us all to roll back the spectre of a warming planet.” This was followed by Obama’s rhetorical flourish about “putting off unpleasant decisions”. In fact, Obama has made no commitment to curtail the America’s infamous responsibility for the causes of global warming. As with Bush and most modern era presidents, it is oil, not stemming carbon emissions, that informs the new administration. Obama’s national security adviser, General Jim Jones, a former Nato supreme commander, made his name planning US military control over the exploitation of oil and gas reserves from the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea to the Gulf of Guinea in Africa.

Sharing the Bollocks Runner-up Prize is the Observer, which on 25 January published a major news report headlined, “How Obama set the tone for a new US revolution”. This was reminiscent of the Observer almost a dozen years ago when liberalism’s other great white hope, Tony Blair, came to power. “Goodbye Xenophobia” was the Observer’s post-election front page in 1997 and “The Foreign Office says Hello World, remember us”. The government, said the breathless text, would push for “new worldwide rules on human rights and the environment” and implement “tough new limits” on arms sales. The opposite happened. Last year, Britain was the biggest arms dealer in the world; currently it is second only to the United States.

In the Blair mould, the Obama White House “sprang into action” with its “radical plans”. The new president’s first phone call was to that Palestinian quisling, the unelected and deeply unpopular Mohammed Abbas. There was a “hot pace” and a “new era”, in which a notorious name from an ancien regime, Richard Holbrooke, was dispatched to Pakistan. In 1978, Holbrooke betrayed a promise to normalise relations with the Vietnamese on the eve of a vicious embargo that ruined the lives of countless Vietnamese children. Under Obama, the “sense of a new era abroad”, declared the Observer, “was reinforced by the confirmation of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state”. Clinton has threatened to “entirely obliterate Iran” on behalf of Israel.

What the childish fawning over Obama obscures is the dark power assembled under cover of America’s first “post-racial president”. Apart from the US, the world’s most dangerous state is demonstrably Israel, having recently killed and maimed some 4,000 people in Gaza with impunity. On 10 February, a bellicose Israeli electorate is likely to put Binyamin Netanyahu into power. Netanyahu is a fanatic’s fanatic who has made clear his intention of attacking Iran. In the Wall Street Journal on 24 January, he described Iran as the “terrorist mother base” and justified the murder of civilians in Gaza because “Israel cannot accept an Iranian terror base (Gaza) next to its major cities”. On 31 January, unaware he was being filmed, Israel’s ambassador in Australia described the massacres in Gaza as a “pre-introduction” - dress rehearsal - for an attack on Iran.

For Netanyahu, the reassuring news is that Obama’s administration is the most Zionist in living memory – a truth that has struggled to be told from beneath the soggy layers of Obama-love. Not a single member of Obama’s team demurred from Obama’s support for Israel’s barbaric actions in Gaza. Obama himself likened the safety of his two young daughters with that of Israeli children while making not a single reference to the thousands of Palestinian children killed with American weapons - a violation of both international and US law. He did, however, demand that the people of Gaza be denied “smuggled” small arms with which to defend themselves against the world’s fourth largest military power. And he paid tribute to the Arab dictatorships, such as Egypt, which are bribed by the US Treasury to help the US and Israel enforce policies described by the United Nations Rapporteur, Richard Falk, a Jew, as “genocidal”.

It is time the Obama lovers grew up. It is time those paid to keep the record straight gave us the opportunity to debate informatively. In the 21st century, people power remains a huge and exciting and largely untapped force for change, but it is nothing without truth. “In the time of universal deceit,” wrote George Orwell, “telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

Touching a nerve: a case study in propaganda

When I set up this blog I didn’t intend it to be so heavy on Western Sahara. However, the more I’ve worked in Western Sahara the more I have been exposed to the politics of the region - in particular the anti-independence, anti-referendum, and especially anti-Polisario propaganda that emanates continuously from Rabat and supporters of Morocco’s occupation. This runs the gamut from laughable through inventive to sometimes offensive, and can be quite sophisticated. Having an over-developed social conscience I sometimes feel compelled to address this propaganda, and expose it where I can (although I really don’t want to end up as an apologist for the Polisario - the issue to me is not the nature of the Polisario, but rather Morocco’s occupation and the issue of self-determination, which would be at the heart of the Western Sahara question whether opposition to Moroccan occupation was led by Polisario or Mickey Mouse). My efforts in this regard are necessarily small, as countering the Moroccan propaganda machine could easily be a full-time job, and not one I’d want, even if someone was paying me (and they’re not, despite rumours to the contrary).

There are plenty of people on the Moroccan side (and the Polisario side - let’s be fair) for whom “information management” is a full-time job. Perhaps foolishly, in terms of time costs, I allowed myself to get drawn into a discussion with someone whom I presume is one of these professionals, over at Global Voices Online. The gentleman in question calls himself Ahmed Salem Amr Khaddad, and he claims to be a “Unionist Sahrawi”. (i.e. in favour of the forced union between Western Sahara and Morocco). I gave him the benefit of the doubt, and we had a long exchange, which eventually fizzled out. He paid me the compliment of commenting on Sand and Dust at long last, under a recent post. Now, when people post on your blog you can see their IP address, so I established that Ahmed Salem, or at least his internet connection, is based in Casablanca, with the IP address registered to the Office National des Postes et Telecommunications (based on plugging the IP address into the free web software at http://www.ip-adress.com/ip_tracer/).

After my last post on the McDonald’s and the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s maps (I wonder if they’re now using the same source, or should that be sauce?), Ahmed Salem underwent a veritable eruption on Global Voices online, which had linked to my ramblings. Apparently I hit some sort of nerve. This is what he wrote:

“The article above comes from the blog of a very well known Polisario supporter under the name of Nick Brooks. His pro-polisario blog is about biases he is far from the situation on the ground. I have already discussed with Nick about his position. He always argues that he is impartial in his blog ?!#2~à@)&°0 !!!!! I told him so why putting just pro-polisarian links on your blog? Why not putting URLs form the unionist sahraouis website as CORCAS and many others supporting unionism in the region of Western Sahara? No way. Nick is not credible at all. He is supposed to conduct some research work in a buffer zone established by the UN in 1991 just after the war held between the moroccan army and the polisario troops supported by Algeria & Lybia. HE IS SPONSORED BY AN ALGERIAN STAKEHOLDER OIL COMPANY ;-) . He is very closed to Polisario troops in the buffer zone.

I believe Nick is among those who would like to maintain the status quo in the Western Sahara issue to keep alive his research work and SPONSORING.

Nick has no lesson to give to the international community about the reality on the ground in Western Sahara. It becomes clear to everyone that Polisario leaders were lying and they are still continuing to lie on Human rights in Western Sahara.”

Of course I replied. In fact I was quite flattered to have generated such a response. Whatever its other impacts, this blog appears to be raising the blood pressure of at least one Moroccan propagandist, and the fact that the practitioners of the Maghrebian dark arts find it necessary to indulge in such slander suggests that they feel my views have some relevance, and that’s gratifying. By the way, he’s right about my not being impartial (but wrong about my claims to be) - as another blog puts it: “truth not balance”

I have to say I’m not sure whether to be amused or disapproving of Ahmed Salem’s accusations, which I suspect are a little hypocritical, given that he’s probably employed to peddle propaganda. Out of interest I googled “Ahmed Salem Amr Khaddad” to see what his web footprint was like - i.e. how busy he is on the web with his propaganda. Not huge, but significant. Maybe this isn’t his full-time job but he’s certainly pretty active, and his arguments are well-rehearsed and often inventive. In any case his arguments provide a good case study of the Moroccan propaganda machine, and anyone interested in what sort of arguments and tactics the Moroccans are using to persuade, cajole and insist would do worse than look at the works of Ahmed Salem Amr Khaddad.

In addition to Global Voices and this blog, he crops up on: Flickr; Magharebia; Wikipedia (as Moroccansahraoui, claiming to be from Laayoune); Palestine Think Tank (under his own name alongside another “Moroccan Sahrawi” using similar language and levelling the same accusations at the author of the article in question as he levels at yours truly: “you looks well paid by the Algerian regime to defend a false cuase, from the bigining and Algeria is spending money to find people like you to spread this kind of lies….the only HYPOCRIT HERE IS YOURSELF“); and Christianne Vienne’s website (she’s a Belgian senator, from what I can see). So he’s certainly busy, pushing the same line - that the majority of Sahrawi want to be Moroccan, that Polisario is a Marxist (or post-Marxist, now Islamic fundamentalist) organisation holding people against their will, that only a small percentage of the people in the camps around Tindouf are Sahrawi, the remainder being economic migrants from the Sahel, and so on, and accusing anyone who disagrees with him of being on the Algerian payroll.

Ahmed Salem likes to point to the CORCAS website a lot. CORCAS is the Royal Advisory Council on Saharan Affairs, appointed by the Moroccan government to give the appearance of a legitimate devolved administration. Their website has lots of articles about how great the Autonomy Plan is and how wicked the Polisario are, and not a few pictures of King Mohamed VI. I couldn’t help but think of the Egyptian Gazette, which I used to glance at in the early 1990s when I was living in Cairo, and which always kicked off with a story about President Mubarak.

Ahmed Salem also likes to argue that Morocco is bringing the benefits of development and modernity to poor primitive, neglected Western Sahara, and points to a number of Moroccan sites boasting about investment in the territory. His Flickr account (westernsaharaoccidental) consists of photos presumably intended to illustrate modernity and abundance in Laayoune and Dakhla, in the Moroccan-controlled areas of Western Sahara (market stalls groaning with fresh produce and aerial shots of modern conurbations). Most of these photos are captioned “Autonomy and more development to face the Globalization”. Of course different kinds of images can be found on sites such as ASVDH, which monitors human rights abuses in the occupied areas.

So, why am I bothering to devote attention to this propaganda merchant? Partly as a sort of right-to-reply after his outburst at me, but also (and more importantly) to cast a spotlight on the Moroccan propaganda machine while it’s in action and allow the few readers of this blog to scrutinize the arguments and tactics that form its backbone. The propaganda of Ahmed Salem and his fellow practitioners follows a number of key principles, which seem to include the following:

1. Steer the debate away from the issue of Morocco’s occupation and the holding of the referendum, and turn it into one about the Polisario, whom you should portray as a separatist group driven wholly or predominantly by Marxist or Islamist ideology. Ideally you should transform the debate into one about the historical origins and legitimacy of the Polisario, which you should misrepresent. Your aim should be to discredit the Polisario through accusations of slavery, child abuse, terrorism, human rights abuses, communism, and Islamic fundamentalism. People should be left with the opinion that the Polisario are so reprehensible that the Sahrawi, whom they represent, do not deserve independence. By contrast Morocco should be portrayed as a champion of democracy and human rights which offers a much better future.

2. Emphasise that independence is not realistic and that those who support the referendum are seeking to prolong the conflict and are just causing more suffering for the people in the Tindouf camps. Pretend that your concerns are for the well-being of the Sahrawi refugees (although insist elsewhere that they are not refugees and many are not Saharawi), thus making your opponents appear callous and uncaring about the refugees - make it clear that anyone who disagrees with you is guilty of using the refugees as political pawns in pursuit of a sinister political agenda.

3. Portray the Tindouf camps as detention centres in which people are held against their will. Morocco has the best interests of the people in the camps at heart - they want to be Moroccan.

4. Emphasise the nature of the conflict as one between Algeria and Morocco, rather than between Morocco and the Polisario, and insist on Algeria’s links to terrorists, Marxists/communists and Islamic fundamentalists. Always emphasise the leftist or “eastern-block” nature of the countries that have historically supported the idea of independence - your audience is predominantly a western one and this will help to discredit the idea of a referendum on independence.

5. Accuse any foreigners supporting the referendum of being in the pay of Algeria, and any Sahrawi or Moroccan groups who question Morocco’s occupation of belonging to irrelevant, extremist, fringe political groups. It is very important to persuade people that those who disagree with the position of the Moroccan government are a tiny minority whose views do not count.

6. Emphasise the benefits that Morocco is bringing to the occupied areas of Western Sahara - the issue is really one of development, not invasion and occupation. Opponents of autonomy within a greater Morocco are ill informed extremists and are against modernity and development.

7. Deny that the Polisario controls a significant part of Western Sahara and portray this as a buffer zone set up by Morocco in cooperation with the UN. Accuse anyone talking about the “Free Zone” of propaganda. Very few people have been to the Polisario-controlled areas, and most people do not know that they exist, thinking instead that Morocco controls all of Western Sahara. It is very important to maintain this impression.

8. Give the impression that the UN and the international community support Morocco’s position and its autonomy plan, and see this as the only realistic option. Insist that Morocco’s autonomy plan is compatible with the principle of self-determination.

9. Invoke the views of international bodies when they support the Moroccan position, but dismiss views from the same bodies when they appear to support the holding of a referendum or the idea of independence. For example, cite UN envoy van Walsum’s controversial comments that independence is unrealistic, but dismiss the original UN resolutions on Western Sahara as irrelevant.

10. Dismiss countries that recognise Polisario as the legitimate government of Western Sahara as irrelevant, usually Marxist, regimes. Similarly, argue that the original rulings of the UN on the need for self-determination are irrelevant because the security council was dominated by leftist governments whose opinions should not count.

11. Portray the conflict as a hangover from the Cold War rather than a conflict about decolonisation. Emphasise that it was a manifestation of the conflict between Western capitalism and Eastern communism, which the West won. Emphasise that the Polisario and the independence cause had support from the East - the message should be that, being on the losing side in the cold war, the Polisario and Algeria should give up the independence struggle as the world has moved on.

12. Make lots of stuff up and don’t worry about consistency - it doesn’t matter if many of your assertions contradict each other: if you push them hard enough some of them will stick.

13. If people remain unconvinced by all the above tell them to shut up and write, PREFERABLY IN CAPITALS, that they are not impartial/objective, that they have no credibility or authority to speak about the topic, that they do not understand the situation, and that they must be in the pay of Algeria and the Polisario.

I’m sure we can add to this list - suggestions are welcome.

I hope Ahmed Salem appreciates the attention I’ve devoted to him. He’s always telling me off for not linking to pro-Moroccan websites on this blog. While this is a bit rich given his sole focus on links to CORCAS and other pro-Morocco, anti-Polisario websites, I’ll let that pass and hope that this post redresses the balance. I’m sure he’ll appreciate my collecting his works and presenting them as a set of handy links alongside the one to CORCAS. Maybe he’ll do us the honour of commenting again here, saving me the trouble of more harvesting of his opinions from other sites.

Clowning around, or McForeign Policy

Moroccan incarnation of fast food giant McDonald’s felt it appropriate to apologise for producing and distributing an accurate map of Morocco which scandalously omitted to include Western Sahara as a part of the kingdom. The map was apparently included with its “Happy Meal”. McDonald’s dutifully responded to a complaint from the guardians of the occupation by saying that “borders were incorrectly drawn” and exhibting due contrition (1).

I guess this is understandable - small considerations such as respect for international law and UN resolutions, and squeamishness about territorial aggression, occupation of neighbouring territories, and widespread human rights abuses obviously take a back seat when it comes to the important business of selling burgers and making lots of money.

So what’s the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s excuse? Apparently even more eager than McDonalds to appease the Moroccan imperial machine, the FCO includes on its website a map of Morocco which includes all of Western Sahara. As far as I’m aware this isn’t as a result of a public scandal in which an accurate map respecting internationally recognised borders, and Western Sahara’s status as a disputed non-self-governing territory, was distributed to Moroccan kids along with Union Flags or Beefeaters in little plastic tubes. This rather gives the lie to the British government’s claim to support the upholding of international law and UN resolutions, and to favour the Sahrawi’s right to self-determination.

A comparison might be interesting here. Syrian approved maps (2) show the Turkish province of Hatay as part of Syria, which has long claimed this region. As it probably should, the The FCO map of Syria shows Hatay as part of Turkey. Now, this is entirely different, you may think, as Morocco at least exercises de facto control over Western Sahara, whereas Syria has no presence in Hatay. Well, as I’ve pointed out elsewhere, Moroccan control does not extend throughout all of Western Sahara, with a large swathe of the territory being controlled by the Polisario independence movement. So, the FCO map includes, as part of Morocco, areas which are not formally recognised as Moroccan by any government except that of Morocco, and areas which Morocco does not even control. Furthermore, these latter areas are administered by a functioning government of a state that is recognised by the majority of African nations.

I guess the lesson here is that, if you’re a government that wants the UK to recognise your “sovereignty” over a region (even if only informally), you just have to throw your weight around and convince the poor spineless saps at the FCO that your country is strategically important. Belligerence and intransigence pay, apparently. It doesn’t even matter if the areas you claim are not under your control and are governed by someone else, as long as you are persuasive enough and convince the poor dears at the FCO that said region needs to recognised as “yours” in order to combat the terrorist bogeyman (even if he isn’t there - invoking terrorism is usally enough, regardless of the facts).

When I first visited Western Sahara in 2002 I contacted the FCO to see what their travel advice said (I needed to know about this for my insurance). Even though I told them that I was going to a part of Western Sahara only accessible from Algeria and Mauritania, which was not under Moroccan control, they forwarded my query to the embassy in Rabat. The embassy never replied to me, but no doubt passed the information to their Moroccan buddies responsible for monitoring activity in the Free Zone.

Maybe there are elements in the FCO that regret the passing of the British Empire, who indulge their tastes by assisting other countries with colonial aspirations. Or perhaps the FCO and McDonald’s have more in common than one might think, namely the role of clowns in their business activities. In the FCO’s case, these activities involve supporting things like the sale of weapons and the provision of military training to, er, Morocco (Shelley, 2004, p. 194; War on Want).

References:

(1) AFP. McDonald’s sorry for wiping Western Sahara off map. 1 Dec. 2008: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jNkJV9kHBK656tZKlx5UnPE_uVcw.

(2) 1991 Road Map of the Middle East, published by GEOprojects, PO Box 133.5294, Beirut, Lebanon (purchased in Syria).

Shelley, T. Endgame in the Western Sahara: What Future for Africa’s Las Colony. Zed Books, London.

UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office:

Western Sahara page: http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/travelling-and-living-overseas/travel-advice-by-country/middle-east-north-africa/western-sahara

Morocco page: http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/about-the-fco/embassies-and-posts/find-an-embassy-overseas/middle-east-and-north-africa/embassy-rabat

Syria page: http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/about-the-fco/embassies-and-posts/find-an-embassy-overseas/middle-east-and-north-africa/embassy-damascus

Note: the Morocco and Syria pages are those of the respective British embassies, housed on the UK FCO website.

USA-Marruecos: ¿Fin del programa "Sahara a cambio de torturas"?

Guantánamo tenía sus límites. Esto explica el por qué de los "vuelos de la CIA" a países que no tenían límites a la hora de torturar. Uno de ellos era Marruecos. Pero esos países pedían algo a cambio. Ahora parece que el nuevo presidente Obama ha puesto fin a estas siniestras "sub-contratas".

Los "vuelos de la CIA" transportaban a ciertos detenidos de Guantánamo a países donde no había "problema" en aplicarles técnicas de "interrogatorio" que ni en Guantánamo estaban permitidas. Pero, claro, este "trabajo" no se hacía gratis.

Entre los destinos de esos vuelos están Marruecos y Kosovo, según Le Nouvel Observateur.

Esto explicaría el por qué Bush se empeñó tanto en reconocer la independencia de Kosovo (el cuarto país más corrupto del mundo después de Camboya, Camerún y Albania, según Transparencia Internacional), acto claramente ilegal que está pendiente del dictamen del Tribunal Internacional de Justicia.

En relación con Marruecos, el precio de las torturas parece que fue el apoyo de Bush a Marruecos en el asunto del Sahara Occidental, lo cual explicaría cómo el mismo presidente que apoyó en 2003 el "Plan Baker" luego se desdijo apoyando la propuesta de llamada "autonomía" que Marruecos presentó en abril de 2007.

El nuevo presidente, Obama, no sólo ha anunciado el cierre de Guantánamo sino, lo que es mucho más importante, el cierre de las prisiones secretas en otros países. No obstante, algún autor como Tom Eley ha advertido que la orden ejecutiva firmada por Obama tiene ciertas dosis de hipocresía pues se permite la reclusión de individuos en estas dependencias por un "breve tiempo".

Dick Marty, senador suizo que incitó al Consejo de Europa a llevar a cabo una investigación que reveló la existencia de centros de detención en Europa del Este y en África del Norte ha dicho que espera que los hechos se aclaren después de la clausura de estos centros de detención secretos. Según este senador

"Para algunos países esto va a ser muy embarazoso. Pienso que los países europeos harían bien en decir la verdad ahora"

El senador Marty duda que estos centros sigan ahora funcionando en Europa. No obstante, ha declarado:

"En África, o en Marruecos, presumo que hay algo".

Habrá que ver
La cuestión que se suscita, por tanto, es la siguiente:
- si el apoyo de USA a Marruecos en el asunto del Sahara hubieses sido la contraprestración por las torturas que el país norteafricano practicase por cuenta de la CIA,
- y si, efectivamente, se cerrasen los centros de tortura y se pusiese fin a este programa de subcontratación de la tortura de la CIA en Marruecos,
- ¿qué ocurriría con la posición de USA en el asunto del Sahara Occidental?

La respuesta, pronto.

El fraude de la ideología de la "amenaza yihadista": nuevos datos.

En los últimos días han aparecido nuevas, y gravísimas, informaciones sobre la red de mentiras tejida en torno a la "amenaza yihadista". Por un lado, la Audiencia Nacional acusa a la policía de "inventar una trama" yihadista en un caso ya referido en este blog; por otro pone en libertad a varios detenidos en otra "investigación" sobre otra "red" "yihadista".

Los ideólogos de la "amenaza yihadista" no ganan para disgustos. Como ya advertí aquí, ya se estaban poniendo la venda antes de tener la herida. Parece como si tuvieran información de lo que les esperaba. Pero como veremos, en la segunda parte de este artículo, lo que les ha venido a sido muy, pero que muy grave.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I. NUEVO FRACASO DE LA IDEOLOGÍA DE LA "AMENAZA YIHADISTA"
Vayamos primero al nuevo "gatillazo" de la ideología de la "amenaza yihadista". Esta es la secuencia de los hechos.

1º. 20 de enero de 2009

Seis detenidos por fraude fiscal y posible financiación terrorista
(...)
Los arrestados residían en poblaciones del área metropolitana de Barcelona -Badalona, Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Hospitalet y Esplugues-, que en los últimos años han sido destinos de otras operaciones policiales vinculadas a la financiación del terrorismo yihadista.
(...)
En las órdenes de detención dictadas por el juez de la Audiencia Nacional Baltasar Garzón, bajo cuya dirección se vienen desarrollando las investigaciones desde 2005, se incluía entre los posibles delitos cometidos el de "financiación con fines terroristas".
El ministro del Interior, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, insistió ayer en que el motivo principal de la llamada Operación Cheapest es el fraude fiscal, aunque señaló que no puede descartarse que durante la investigación "salga algo más". Por ello pidió prudencia a la hora de relacionar a los detenidos con redes yihadistas.

2º. 23 de enero de 2009

Garzón deja libres en 72 horas a los 6 arrestados por financiar la 'yihad'
Sobre ellos no pesa ninguna imputación concreta por terrorismo y Rubalcaba dice que se les detuvo «sólo» por una «sospecha»
(...)
Los mismos que ocuparon el martes minutos de telediarios y páginas de periódico bajo la rúbrica de «islamistas» salieron ayer en libertad con la única imputación concreta de defraudar a Hacienda 120.000 euros por impago del IVA.
(...)
En contraste, el Ministerio del Interior había presentado los arrestos como el resultado de una investigación iniciada en 2005 «para constatar la posible financiación de bandas armadas». La operación incluyó registros en Barcelona, Valencia, Logroño y Las Palmas.
«De lo actuado se desprende que los detenidos formarían un grupo organizado que podría estar desviando cantidades de dinero [...] hacia personas o grupos terroristas yihadistas procedente de la defraudación a la Hacienda Pública a través del grupo de empresas liderado por Nasar Iqbal Chaudry», dice el auto de ayer. «La desviación de fondos, ocultos para el circuito financiero legal, se realiza de modo similar al modus operandi de Al Qaeda», continúa la resolución.
Ahora bien, tras ponerle nombre y apellidos al presunto «líder» del entramado y haber citado a la red terrorista internacional de Osama bin Laden, Garzón precisa: «De los datos obrantes no se desprende en este momento procesal una concreta imputación en las actividades de financiación, por lo que deberán proseguir las actividades de la Guardia Civil».
Por ello, los seis detenidos salieron en libertad sin fianza
(...)
Pérez Rubalcaba, se refirió también ayer a la puesta en libertad de los seis paquistaníes en tan breve plazo de tiempo: «El fraude fiscal es seguro. La financiación terrorista es una sospecha que trataremos de demostrar ante el tribunal. Pero es verdad, hoy ya se lo puedo decir, ya que el otro día tuve que ser muy prudente, que estamos trabajando para intentar demostrar que, como creemos, ese dinero ha ido a financiar actividades de terrorismo islamista. Pero ya les digo que no es fácil de demostrar. Por eso, repito, en este momento es sólo una sospecha».

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
II. LA JUSTICIA ACUSA A LA POLICÍA DE FABULAR TRAMAS TERRORISTAS

En la edición de "El País" de ayer se daban detalles sobre una noticia ya comentada en este blog: la decisión de la Audiencia Nacional de archivar la causa abierta por la supuesta "red" de financiación "yihadista" de Abu Dadah.

La Audiencia Nacional califica de lamentable, precipitada y ligera una investigación policial sobre financiación de terrorismo yihadista y asegura que se ocultaron pruebas favorables a tres personas procesadas a las que se privó de libertad durante seis meses. El auto de la Sala de lo Penal es uno de los varapalos más sonados que ha recibido la policía en esta clase de investigaciones y califica la trama como "policialmente fabulada".
(...)
en la investigación policial sobre el dinero que movió el sirio Bassam Dalati, acusado de financiar la yihad y ahora absuelto, se ocultó una prueba favorable manipulando una nota manuscrita de un empleado del Barclays
(...)
Entre las personas que recibieron este dinero estaba su socio, el sirio Mohamed Galeb Kalaje, condenado por colaboración con Al Qaeda en otra causa diferente y todavía preso. También Imad Eddin Barakat y Abu Dahdad, jefe de Al Qaeda en España, condenado junto a Kalaje y también preso. El juez Ismael Moreno, titular de la Juzgado de Instrucción número 2 de la Audiencia Nacional, dictó un auto en el que acusaba a los tres de destinar ese dinero "para la financiación de células de carácter terrorista".
(...)
El auto de la Sala de lo Penal de la Audiencia Nacional donde se absuelve a los tres acusados destaca la existencia de esa fotocopia en un informe policial incorporado a los autos, reproduce el texto exculpatorio escrito por el empleado del Barclays y añade que, en otro informe policial, enviado a la fiscalía "entre los documentos que se acompaña, se encuentra la misma antedicha fotocopia de los cheques, en la que se ha ocultado la precitada nota manuscrita mediante la colocación de una tira de papel en blanco". Los magistrados Félix Alfonso Guevara, Ángeles Barreiro y Clara Bayarri apostillan así el inquietante hallazgo. "Tan clamoroso dato pasó desapercibido al ministerio fiscal y al instructor. Y a tal respecto la Sala se va a abstener de deducir testimonio de tal divergencia por considerar, en una benevolente hermenéutica, que su incorporación a los autos pudo deberse a error, ello, naturalmente, sin perjuicio de que la parte interesada pueda ejercitar las acciones pertinentes".
La incorporación a los autos del folio manipulado lo hizo la policía, pero los magistrados no señalan al responsable.
"Podemos concluir con la mención de una lamentable muestra de la precipitación y ligereza en la actuación policial -al igual que lo es palmariamente el contenido del informe policial de 11 de septiembre de 2007-, ajena a lo que debe de ser una investigación coherente y seria, deviniendo ciertamente inadmisible y en todo caso contraria al artículo 2 de la Ley de Enjuiciamiento Criminal". El que garantiza que se presenten tanto las pruebas favorables como las que no lo son. El auto de la Sala hace una dura crítica de los informes policiales incorporados a la causa y señala que las afirmaciones sobre la ausencia de actividades económicas de las empresas participadas por los querellados, la ausencia de trabajadores, la falsedad de domicilios "resultan carentes de todo sustento en su confrontación con los informes de la Hacienda Pública, de la Seguridad Social, del propio Sepblac (Servicio de Prevención de Blanqueo de Capitales) y de la expresiva documentación de la representación del señor Dalati".
Los magistrados aseguran que no existe ningún indicio en cuanto al pretendido destino a grupos terroristas de los fondos investigados. "No especificándose en parte alguna, ni por aproximación la identidad de tales grupos ni su ubicación". Y añaden: "La acreditada ausencia de toda intercomunicación entre los procesados ya sería, en sí misma, bastante para al desvanecimiento de la trama terrorista policialmente fabulada".
Y al declarar su inocencia concluyen con el daño causado. "Los querellados Basan Dalati y Mohamed Galeb Kalaje han padecido injustamente privación de su libertad durante más de seis meses, a lo que nada hace que el segundo se encontrase cumpliendo condena, pues tal privación provisional de libertad tiene su reflejo perjudicial en su situación penitenciaria". Dalati estudia ejercer acciones legales contra Interior.

Varias preguntas, muy inquietantes, se plantean, a propósito de esta trama POLICIALMENTE FABULADA de la Audiencia Nacional:

1º. ¿verdaderamente el documento exculpatorio pasó "desapercibido" al Ministerio Fiscal y al juez instructor, Ismael Moreno?

2º. ¿Es esto muestra de "precipitación" y "ligereza" de la actuación policial o estamos ante un intento planificado de crear una "amenaza yihadista" allí donde no la hay?

3º. Habida cuenta de que existen publicaciones (referidas en otro lugar de este blog) sobre estas "tramas yihadistas" ¿quien es el fabulador de estas tramas? ¿son los ideólogos de la amenaza los que las han fabulado "vendiendo" el "producto" a la policía prevaliéndose de su calidad de "expertos" en "yihadismo"? ¿o los ideólogos son sólo los publicitarios de un "producto" fabulado en otra sede?

4º. Junto a la injusta privación de libertad que han sufrido ¿por qué no se alude al injusto daño al derecho al honor de las víctimas de esta fabulación?

Y una pregunta final, acerca del hecho de que el autor de la importante información de El País del 1 de febrero sea José María Irujo, periodista habitualmente transmisor de las tesis de la ideología de la "amenaza yihadista":
¿es que este periodista se apercibe ahora de que ha sido utilizado por los fabuladores de la "amenaza yihadista" y quiere desvincularse de la trama (esta sí real) de los fabuladores?

Marruecos viola los derechos humanos en Holanda

Que Marruecos no respeta los derechos humanos en sus fronteras es cosa sabida. Que tampoco los respeta en el territorio ocupado del Sahara Occidental, también. Pero resulta que tampoco los respeta en la Unión Europea. Y esto es especialmente grave cuando la UE quiere firmar un "estatuto avanzado" con Marruecos.

Muy confiado debe estar Mohamed VI, nuestro Obama del sur, para tener el atrevimiento de violar los derechos humanos en la UE cuando se está negociando el "estatuto avanzado" que "premia" los "progresos" del majzén en materia de derechos humanos.

La Convención sobre los Derechos del Niño de la ONU, de 1989, ratificada por Marruecos el 21 de julio de 1993, dice en su artículo 8.1:

Los Estados Partes se comprometen a respetar el derecho del niño a preservar su identidad, incluidos la nacionalidad, el nombre y las relaciones familiares de conformidad con la ley sin injerencias ilícitas

Da igual. El gobierno marroquí ha enviado una instrucción a todas sus embajadas y consulados con una lista de nombres prohibidos entre los que se encuentran los nombres cristianos y los nombres bereberes y ello aunque la mitad de los marroquíes son bereberes. Así lo ha revelado un diario holandés, el 28 de enero (un resumen en inglés, aquí).
Un responsable del Majzén, Idris Bajdi, lo "explica" así:

Prohibimos los nombres bereberes porque entran en conflicto con la identidad (marroquí) y abren la puerta a la diseminación de nombres sin significado

¿Que uno de los tratados de derechos humanos más importante dice otra cosa? Da igual. Parece, por tanto, que Marruecos parece respetar este convenio internacional como tiene por costumbre respetar el resto de sus compromisos internacionales.

Obama era nuestro vecino... ¡y no lo sabíamos!

No es el día de los Santos Inocentes. Es lo que dice "Le Matin" el diario oficialista del monarca marroquí. Progres y menos progres alabando las virtudes de Obama... y resulta que no nos dimos cuenta que Obama ya existía. Estaba aquí al ladito. Y es que, según "Le Matin", "su majestad" Mohamed VI y Obama son "aliados de la libertad y de la democracia". Vamos, que son igualitos.

Uno no sabe de qué admirarse más: si de la adulación desmedida o del cinismo. Es lo propio de todos los sistemas totalitarios la adulación al tirano. Sólo hay que recordar todas las alabanzas que dirigían sus súbditos a Stalin o a Mao Tse-Tung ("Zedong" para los horteras que dicen "Beijing" en vez de Pekín y "Mumbai" en vez de Bombay).

Veamos lo que dice el editorial de 22 de enero de Le Matin, el diario oficioso del palacio real alauita:

"El rey de Marruecos acaba de dirigirle (a Obama) un mensaje de gran alcance, que tiene el valor de símbolo, porque se trata de un texto que se sale de lo común.
Largo, caluroso y profundo, pretende ser un testimonio de la relación excepcional que existe entre Marruecos y los Estados Unidos, (...), de la exaltación de los ideales de libertad, democracia y justicia que nuestros dos jefes de Estado comparten y, en fin, de su adhesión inquebrantable a los derechos humanos.
En efecto, todo parece aproximar al rey de Marruecos y al presidente de los Estados Unidos que, por sólo una diferencia de dos años, tienen la misma edad y encarnan la nueva generación de dirigentes llevados por una poderosa ola popular y una legitimad incuestionable
(...)
La relación marroco-americana puede también valerse de los valores que los dos jefes de Estado, "S.M." Mohamed VI y el presidente Obama comparten: la adhesión a la democracia, a la libertad y a la justicia"

Come on down for your Freedom Medals

In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger writes that "as deserving as Tony Blair is of his George W. Bush Freedom Medal, others cry out for a place in his company". Following Israel's assault on Gaza, he offers two additional nominees.

On 13 January, George W. Bush presented “presidential freedom medals”, said to be America’s highest recognition of devotion to freedom and peace. Among the recipients were Tony Blair, the epic liar who, with Bush, bears responsibility for the physical, social and cultural destruction of an entire nation; John Howard, the former prime minister of Australia and minor American vassal who led the most openly racist government in his country’s modern era; and Alvaro Uribe, the president of Colombia, whose government, according the latest study of that murderous state, is “responsible for than 90 per cent of all cases of torture”.

As satire was made redundant when Henry Kissinger and Rupert Murdoch were honoured for their contributions to the betterment of humanity, Bush’s ceremony was, at least, telling of a system of which he and his freshly-minted successor are products. Although more spectacular in its choreographed histrionics, Barack Obama’s inauguration carried the same Orwellian message of inverted truth: of ruthlessness of criminal power, if not unending war. The continuity between the two administrations has been as seamless as the transfer of the odious Bono’s allegiance, symbolised by President Obama’s oath-taking on the steps of Congress – where, only days earlier, the House of Representatives, dominated by the new president’s party, the Democrats, voted 390-5 to back Israel’s massacres in Gaza. The supply of American weapons used in the massacres was authorised previously by such a margin. These included the Hellfire missile which sucks the air out of lungs, ruptures livers and amputates arms and legs without the necessity of shrapnel: a “major advance”, according to the specialist literature. As a senator, then president-elect, Obama raised no objection to these state-of-the-art [sic] weapons being rushed to Israel – worth $22 billion in 2008 – in time for the long-planned assault on Gaza’s fenced and helpless population. This is understandable; it how the system works. On no other issue does Congress and the president, Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, give such absolute support. By comparison, the German Reichstag in the 1930s was a treasure of democratic and principled debate.

This is not to say presidents and members of Congress fail to recognise the Israel “lobbyists” in their midst as thugs and political blackmailers, though they never say in public, and indeed disport themselves at Zionist fund-raisers and on paid-for trips to the object of their ardour. But they fear them. As eyes welled on 20 January for the first African-American president, who remembered Cynthia McKinney, the courageous African-American Congresswoman, the first to be elected from Georgia, who spoke out for the Palestinians and was duly driven from office by a Zionist smear campaign? For their part, the Israelis’ current, phoney “unilateral ceasefire” in Gaza is designed not to embarrass, not yet, its new man in the White House, whose single acknowledgement of the “suffering” of the Palestinians has been long eclipsed by his loyalty oaths to Tel Aviv (even promising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, which not even Bush did) and his appointment of probably the most pro-Zionist administration for a generation.

As deserving as Blair, Howard and Uribe are of the Bush Freedom Medal, others cry out for a place in their company. With the assault on Gaza a defining moment of truth and lies, principle and cowardice, peace and war, justice and injustice, I have two nominees. My first is the government and society of Israel. (I checked; the Freedom Medal can be awarded collectively). “Few of us,” wrote Arthur Miller, “can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the State has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied.”

The bleak irony of this should be clear to all in Israel, yet its denial has emboldened a militarist, racist cult that uses every epithet against the Palestinians that was once directed at Jews, with the exception of extermination – and even that is not entirely excluded, as the deputy defence minister, Matan Vilinai, noted last year with his threat of a shoa (holocaust).

In 1948, the year Israel’s right to exist was granted and Palestine’s annulled, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt and other leading Jews in the United States warned the administration not to get involved with fascists like Menachem Begin who described the Palestinians in the way the Nazis used untermenchen – as “animals on two legs”. He became prime minister of Israel. This fascism, which was not often flouted openly, was the harbinger of Likud and Kadima. These are today “mainstream” political parties, whose influence, in the treatment of the Palestinians, covers a national “consensus” that is the source of the terror in Palestine: the brutal dispossessions and perfidious controls, the humiliation and cruelty by statute. The mirror of this is domestic violence at home. Conscripted soldiers return from their “war” on Palestinian women and children and make war on their own. Young whites drafted into South Africa’s apartheid army did the same. Inhumanity on such a scale cannot be buried indefinitely. When Desmond Tutu described his experience in Palestine and Israel as “worse than apartheid”, he pointed out that not even in white supremacist South Africa were there the equivalent of “Jews only” roads. Uri Avnery, one of Israel’s bravest dissidents, says his country’s leaders suffer from “moral insanity”: a prerequisite, I should add, for the award of a Bush Freedom Medal.

My other nominee for a Bush Freedom Medal is that amorphous group known as western journalism, which has always made much of its freedom and impartiality. Listen to the way Israeli “spokespersons” and ambassadors are interviewed. How respectfully their official lies are received; how minimally they are challenged. They are one of us, you see: calm and western-sounding, even blonde, female and attractive. The frightened, jabbering voice on the line from Gaza is not one of us. That is the subliminal message. Listen to newsreaders use only the pejoratives for the Palestinians: words like “militants” for resisters to invasion, many of them heroes, a word never used, and “conflict” for massacre. Mark the timeless propaganda that suggests there are two equal powers fighting a “war”, not a stricken people, attacked and starved by the world’s fourth largest military power which ensures they have no places of refuge. And note the omissions -- the BBC does not preface its reports with the warning that a foreign power controls its reporters’ movements, as it did in Serbia and Argentina, neither does it explain why it shows but glimpses of the extraordinary coverage of al-Jazeera from within Gaza.

There are the ubiquitous myths, too: that Israel has suffered terribly from thousands of missiles fired from Gaza. In truth, the first homemade Qassam rocket was fired across the Israeli border in October 2001, and the first fatality occurred in June 2004. Some 24 Israelis had been killed in this way, compared with 5000 Palestinians killed, more than half of them in Gaza, at least a third of them children. Now imagine if the 1.5 million Gazans had been Jewish, or Kosovar refugees. “The only honorable course for Europe and America is to use military force to try to try to protect the people of Kosovo...”, declared the Guardian on 23 March, 1999. Inexplicably, the Guardian has yet to call for such “an honorable course” to protect the people of Gaza.

Such is the rule of acceptable victims and unacceptable victims. When reporters break this rule they are accused of “anti-Israel bias” and worse, and their life is made a misery by a hyperactive cyber-army that drafts complaints, provides generic material and coaches people all over the world on how to smear as “anti-Jewish” work they have not seen. These vociferous campaigns are complemented by anonymous death threats, which I and others have experienced. Their latest tactic is malicious hacking into websites. But that is desperate, since the times are changing.

Across the world, people once indifferent to the arcane “conflict” in the Middle East, now ask the question the BBC and CNN rarely ask: Why does Israel have a right to exist, but Palestine does not? They ask, too, why do the lawless enjoy such immunity in the pristine world of balance and objectivity? The perfectly-spoken Israeli “spokesman” represents the most lawless regime on earth, exotic tyrannies included, according to a tally of United Nations resolutions defied and Geneva Conventions defiled. In France, 80 organisations are working to bring war crimes indictments against Israel’s leaders. On 15 January, the fine Israeli reporter, Gideon Levy, wrote in Ha’aretz that Israeli generals “will not be the only ones to hide in El Al planes lest they are arrested [overseas]”.

One day, other journalists and their editors and producers may be called upon to not only explain why they did not tell the truth about these criminals but even to stand in the dock with them. No Bush Freedom Medal is worth that.

Gaza under fire

Every war Israel has waged since 1948 has had the same objective: expulsion of the native people and theft of more land. But why are we in the west silent on this truth?


"When the truth is replaced by silence," the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko said, "the silence is a lie." It may appear that the silence on Gaza is broken. The small cocoons of murdered children, wrapped in green, together with boxes containing their dismembered parents, and the cries of grief and rage of everyone in that death camp by the sea can be witnessed on al-Jazeera and YouTube, even glimpsed on the BBC. But Russia's incorrigible poet was not referring to the ephemera we call news; he was asking why those who knew the why never spoke it, and so denied it. Among the Anglo-American intelligentsia, this is especially striking. It is they who hold the keys to the great storehouses of knowledge: the historiographies and archives that lead us to the why.

They know that the horror now raining on Gaza has little to do with Hamas or, absurdly, "Israel's right to exist". They know the opposite to be true: that Palestine's right to exist was cancelled 61 years ago and that the expulsion and, if necessary, extinction of the indigenous people was planned and executed by the founders of Israel. They know, for example, that the infamous "Plan D" of 1947-48 resulted in the murderous depopulation of 369 Palestinian towns and villages by the Haganah (Israeli army) and that massacre upon massacre of Palestinian civilians in such places as Deir Yassin, al-Dawayima, Eilaboun, Jish, Ramle and Lydda are referred to in official records as "ethnic cleansing". Arriving at a scene of this carnage, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, was asked by a general, Yigal Allon: "What shall we do with the Arabs?" Ben-Gurion, reported the Israeli historian Benny Morris, "made a dismissive, energetic gesture with his hand and said, 'Expel them'".

The order to expel an entire population "without attention to age" was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, a future prime minister promoted by the world's most efficient propaganda as a peacemaker. The terrible irony of this was addressed only in passing, such as when the Mapam party co-leader Meir Ya'ari noted "how easily" Israel's leaders spoke of how it was "possible and permissible to take women, children and old men and to fill the road with them because such is the imperative of strategy. And this we say . . . who remember who used this means against our people during the [Second World] War . . . I am appalled."

Every subsequent "war" Israel has waged has had the same objective: the expulsion of the native people and the theft of more and more land. The lie of David and Goliath, of perennial victim, reached its apogee in 1967 when the propaganda became a righteous fury that claimed the Arab states had struck first against Israel. Since then, mostly Jewish truth-tellers such as Avi Shlaim, Noam Chomsky, Tanya Reinhart, Neve Gordon, Tom Segev, Uri Avnery, Ilan Pappé and Norman Finkelstein have undermined this and other myths and revealed a state shorn of the humane traditions of Judaism, whose unrelenting militarism is the sum of an expansionist, lawless and racist ideology called Zionism. "It seems," wrote the Israeli historian Pappé on 2 January, "that even the most horrendous crimes, such as the genocide in Gaza, are treated as discrete events, unconnected to anything that happened in the past and not associated with any ideology or system . . . Very much as the apartheid ideology explained the oppressive policies of the South African government, this ideology - in its most consensual and simplistic variety - allowed all the Israeli governments in the past and the present to dehumanise the Palestinians wherever they are and strive to destroy them. The means altered from period to period, from location to location, as did the narrative covering up these atrocities. But there is a clear pattern [of genocide]."

In Gaza, the enforced starvation and denial of humanitarian aid, the piracy of life-giving resources such as fuel and water, the denial of medicines, the systematic destruction of infrastructure and killing and maiming of the civilian population, 50 per cent of whom are children, fall within the international standard of the Genocide Convention. "Is it an irresponsible overstatement," asked Richard Falk, UN special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories and international law authority at Princeton University, "to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalised Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not."

In describing a “holocaust-in-the making”, Falk was alluding to the Nazis’ establishment of Jewish ghettos in Poland. For one month in 1943, the captive Polish Jews, led by Mordechaj Anielewicz, fought off the German army and the SS, but their resistance was finally crushed and the Nazis exacted their final revenge. Falk is also a Jew. Today’s holocaust-in-the-making, which began with Ben-Gurion’s Plan D, is in its final stages. The difference today is that it is a joint US-Israeli project. The F-16 jet fighters, the 250lb “smart” GBU-39 bombs supplied on the eve of the attack on Gaza, having been approved by a Congress dominated by the Democratic Party, plus the annual $2.4bn in warmaking “aid”, give Washington de facto control. It beggars belief that President-elect Obama was not informed. Outspoken about Russia’s war in Georgia and the terrorism in Mumbai, Obama has maintained a silence on Palestine that marks his approval, which is to be expected, given his obsequiousness to the Tel Aviv regime and its lobbyists during the presidential campaign and his appointment of Zionists as his secretary of state and principal Middle East advisers. When Aretha Franklin sings “Think”, her wonderful 1960s anthem to freedom, at Obama’s inauguration on 20 January, I trust someone with the brave heart of Muntader al-Zaidi, the shoe-thrower, will shout: “Gaza!”

The asymmetry of conquest and terror is clear. Plan D is now "Operation Cast Lead", which is the unfinished "Operation Justified Vengeance". This was launched by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001 when, with George W Bush's approval, he used F-16s against Palestinian towns and villages for the first time.

Why are the academics and teachers silent? Are British universities now no more than “intellectual Tescos”?

In that same year, the authoritative Jane's Foreign Report disclosed that the Blair government had given Israel the "green light" to attack the West Bank after it was shown Israel's secret designs for a bloodbath. It was typical of new Labour's enduring complicity in Palestine's agony. However, the Israeli plan, reported Jane's, needed the "trigger" of a suicide bombing which would cause "numerous deaths and injuries [because] the 'revenge' factor is crucial". This would "motivate Israeli soldiers to demolish the Palestinians". What alarmed Sharon and the author of the plan, General Shaul Mofaz, then Israeli chief of staff, was a secret agreement between Yasser Arafat and Hamas to ban suicide attacks. On 23 November 2001 Israeli agents assassinated the Hamas leader Mahmoud Abu Hanoud and got their "trigger": the suicide attacks resumed in response to his killing.

Something uncannily similar happened on 4 November last year when Israeli special forces attacked Gaza, killing six people. Once again, they got their propaganda "trigger": a ceasefire sustained by the Hamas government - which had imprisoned its violators - was shattered as a result of the Israeli attacks, and home-made rockets were fired into what used to be called Palestine before its Arab occupants were "cleansed". On 23 December, Hamas offered to renew the ceasefire, but Israel's charade was such that its all-out assault on Gaza had been planned six months earlier, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz.

Behind this sordid game is the "Dagan Plan", named after General Meir Dagan, who served with Sharon during his bloody invasion of Leba non in 1982. Now head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence organisation, Dagan is the author of a "solution" that has brought about the imprisonment of Palestinians behind a ghetto wall snaking across the West Bank and in Gaza, now effectively a concentration camp. The establishment of a quisling government in Ramallah, under Mahmoud Abbas, is Dagan's achievement, together with a hasbara (propaganda) campaign, relayed through mostly supine, if intimidated western media, notably in the US, which say Hamas is a terrorist organisation devoted to Israel's destruction and is to "blame" for the massacres and siege of its own people over two generations, since long before its creation. "We have never had it so good," said the Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Gideon Meir in 2006. "The hasbara effort is a well-oiled machine."

In fact, Hamas's real threat is its example as the Arab world's only democratically elected government, drawing its popularity from its resistance to the Palestinians' oppressor and tormentor. This was demonstrated when Hamas foiled a CIA coup in 2007, an event ordained in the western media as "Hamas's seizure of power". Likewise, Hamas is never described as a government, let alone democratic. Neither is its proposal of a ten-year truce reported as a historic recognition of the "reality" of Israel and support for a two-state solution with just one condition: that the Israelis obey international law and end their illegal occupation beyond the 1967 borders. As every annual vote in the UN General Assembly demonstrates, most states agree. On 4 January, the president of the General Assembly, Miguel d'Escoto, described the Israeli attack on Gaza as a "monstrosity".

When the monstrosity is done and the people of Gaza are even more stricken, the Dagan Plan foresees what Sharon called a "1948-style solution" - the destruction of all Palestinian leadership and authority, followed by mass expulsions into smaller and smaller "cantonments", and perhaps, finally, into Jordan. This demolition of institutional and educational life in Gaza is designed to produce, wrote Karma Nabulsi, a Palestinian exile in Britain, "a Hobbesian vision of an anarchic society: truncated, violent, powerless, destroyed, cowed . . . Look to the Iraq of today: that is what [Sharon] had in store for us, and he has nearly achieved it."

Dr Dahlia Wasfi is an American writer on Iraq and Palestine. She has a Jewish mother and an Iraqi Muslim father. "Holocaust denial is anti-Semitic," she wrote on 31 December. "But I'm not talking about the World War II, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad [the president of Iran] or Ashkenazi Jews. What I'm referring to is the holocaust we are all witnessing and responsible for in Gaza today and in Palestine over the past 60 years . . . Since Arabs are Semites, US-Israeli policy doesn't get more anti-Semitic than this." She quoted Rachel Corrie, the young American who went to Palestine to defend Palestinians and was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer. "I am in the midst of a genocide," wrote Corrie, "which I am also indirectly supporting, and for which my government is largely responsible."

Reading the words of both, I am struck by the use of "responsibility". Breaking the lie of silence is not an esoteric abstraction, but an urgent responsibility that falls to those with the privilege of a platform. With the BBC cowed, so too is much of journalism, merely allowing vigorous debate within unmovable, invisible boundaries, ever fearful of the smear of anti-Semitism. The unreported news, meanwhile, is that the death toll in Gaza is the equivalent of 18,000 dead in Britain. Imagine, if you can.

Then there are the academics, the deans and teachers and researchers. Why are they silent as they watch a university bombed and hear the Association of University Teachers in Gaza plead for help? Are British universities now, as Terry Eagleton believes, no more than “intellectual Tescos, churning out a commodity known as graduates rather than greengroceries”?

Then there are the writers. In the dark year of 1939, the Third American Writers' Congress was held at Carnegie Hall in New York and the likes of Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein sent messages and spoke up to ensure that the lie of silence was broken. By one account, 2,500 jammed the auditorium. Today, this mighty voice of realism and morality is said to be obsolete; the literary review pages affect an ironic hauteur of irrelevance; false symbolism is all. As for the readers, their moral and political imagination is to be pacified, not primed. The anti-Muslim Martin Amis expressed this well in Visiting Mrs Nabo kov: "The dominance of the self is not a flaw, it is an evolutionary characteristic; it is just how things are."

If that is how things are, we are diminished as a civilised people. For what happens in Gaza is the defining moment of our time, which either grants war criminals impunity and immunity through our silence, while we contort our own intellect and morality, or it gives us the power to speak out. For the moment I prefer my own memory of Gaza: of the people's courage and resistance and their "luminous humanity", as Karma Nabulsi put it. On my last trip there, I was rewarded with a spectacle of Palestinian flags fluttering in unlikely places. It was dusk and children had done this. No one had told them to do it. They made flagpoles out of sticks tied together, and a few of them climbed on to a wall and held the flag between them, some silently, others crying out. They do this every day when they know foreigners are leaving, in the belief that the world will not forget them.

Holocaust denied: the lying silence of those who know

Writing in the New Statesman, John Pilger calls on 40 years of reporting the Middle East to describe the 'why' of Israel's bloody onslaught on the besieged people of Gaza - an attack that has little to do with Hamas or Israel's right to exist.

“When the truth is replaced by silence,” the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko said, “the silence is a lie.” It may appear the silence is broken on Gaza. The cocoons of murdered children, wrapped in green, together with boxes containing their dismembered parents and the cries of grief and rage of everyone in that death camp by the sea, can be viewed on al-Jazeera and YouTube, even glimpsed on the BBC. But Russia’s incorrigible poet was not referring to the ephemeral we call news; he was asking why those who knew the why never spoke it and so denied it. Among the Anglo-American intelligentsia, this is especially striking. It is they who hold the keys to the great storehouses of knowledge: the historiographies and archives that lead us to the why.

They know that the horror now raining on Gaza has little to do with Hamas or, absurdly, “Israel’s right to exist”. They know the opposite to be true: that Palestine’s right to exist was cancelled 61 years ago and the expulsion and, if necessary, extinction of the indigenous people was planned and executed by the founders of Israel. They know, for example, that the infamous “Plan D” resulted in the murderous de-population of 369 Palestinian towns and villages by the Haganah (Jewish army) and that massacre upon massacre of Palestinian civilians in such places as Deir Yassin, al-Dawayima, Eilaboun, Jish, Ramle and Lydda are referred to in official records as “ethnic cleansing”. Arriving at a scene of this carnage, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, was asked by a general, Yigal Allon, “What shall we do with the Arabs?” Ben-Gurion, reported the Israeli historian Benny Morris, “made a dismissive, energetic gesture with his hand and said, ‘Expel them’. The order to expel an entire population “without attention to age” was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, a future prime minister promoted by the world’s most efficient propaganda as a peacemaker. The terrible irony of this was addressed only in passing, such as when the Mapan Party co-leader Meir Ya’ari noted “how easily” Israel’s leaders spoke of how it was “possible and permissible to take women, children and old men and to fill the roads with them because such is the imperative of strategy … who remembers who used this means against our people during the [Second World] war... we are appalled.”

Every subsequent “war” Israel has waged has had the same objective: the expulsion of the native people and the theft of more and more land. The lie of David and Goliath, of perennial victim, reached its apogee in 1967 when the propaganda became a righteous fury that claimed the Arab states had struck first. Since then, mostly Jewish truth-tellers such as Avi Schlaim, Noam Chomsky, the late Tanya Reinhart, Neve Gordon, Tom Segev, Uri Avnery, Ilan Pappe and Norman Finklestein have dispatched this and other myths and revealed a state shorn of the humane traditions of Judaism, whose unrelenting militarism is the sum of an expansionist, lawless and racist ideology called zionism. “It seems,” wrote the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe on 2 January, “that even the most horrendous crimes, such as the genocide in Gaza, are treated as desperate events, unconnected to anything that happened in the past and not associated with any ideology or system... Very much as the apartheid ideology explained the oppressive policies of the South African government , this ideology – in its most consensual and simplistic variety – has allowed all the Israeli governments in the past and the present to dehumanise the Palestinians wherever they are and strive to destroy them. The means altered from period to period, from location to location, as did the narrative covering up these atrocities. But there is a clear pattern [of genocide].”

In Gaza, the enforced starvation and denial of humanitarian aid, the piracy of life-giving resources such as fuel and water, the denial of medicines and treatment, the systematic destruction of infrastructure and the killing and maiming of the civilian population, 50 per cent of whom are children, meet the international standard of the Genocide Convention. “Is it an irresponsible overstatement,” asked Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and international law authority at Princeton University, “to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not.”

In describing a “holocaust-in-the making”, Falk was alluding to the Nazis’ establishment of Jewish ghettos in Poland. For one month in 1943, the captive Polish Jews led by Mordechaj Anielewiz fought off the German army and the SS, but their resistance was finally crushed and the Nazis exacted their final revenge. Falk is also a Jew. Today’s holocaust-in-the-making, which began with Ben-Gurion’s Plan D, is in its final stages. The difference today is that it is a joint US-Israeli project. The F-16 jet fighters, the 250-pound “smart” GBU-39 bombs supplied on the eve of the attack on Gaza, having been approved by a Congress dominated by the Democratic Party, plus the annual $2.4 billion in war-making “aid”, give Washington de facto control. It beggars belief that President-elect Obama was not informed. Outspoken on Russia’s war in Georgia and the terrorism in Mumbai, Obama’s silence on Palestine marks his approval, which is to be expected, given his obsequiousness to the Tel Aviv regime and its lobbyists during the presidential campaign and his appointment of Zionists as his secretary of state, chief of staff and principal Middle East advisers. When Aretha Franklin sings “Think”, her wonderful 1960s anthem to freedom, at Obama’s inauguration on 21 January, I trust someone with the brave heart of Muntadar al-Zaidi, the shoe-thrower, will shout: “Gaza!”

The asymmetry of conquest and terror is clear. Plan D is now “Operation Cast Lead”, which is the unfinished “Operation Justified Vengeance”. The latter was launched by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001 when, with Bush’s approval, he used F-16s against Palestinian towns and villages for the first time. In the same year, the authoritative Jane’s Foreign Report disclosed that the Blair government had given Israel the “green light” to attack the West Bank after it was shown Israel’s secret designs for a bloodbath. It was typical of New Labour Party’s enduring, cringing complicity in Palestine’s agony. However, the 2001 Israeli plan, reported Jane’s, needed the “trigger” of a suicide bombing which would cause “numerous deaths and injuries [because] the ‘revenge’ factor is crucial”. This would “motivate Israeli soldiers to demolish the Palestinians”. What alarmed Sharon and the author of the plan, General Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli Chief of Staff, was a secret agreement between Yasser Arafat and Hamas to ban suicide attacks. On 23 November, 2001, Israeli agents assassinated the Hamas leader, Mahmud Abu Hunud, and got their “trigger”; the suicide attacks resumed in response to his killing.

Something uncannily similar happened on 5 November last, when Israeli special forces attacked Gaza, killing six people. Once again, they got their propaganda “trigger”. A ceasefire initiated and sustained by the Hamas government – which had imprisoned its violators - was shattered by the Israeli attack and home-made rockets were fired into what used to be Palestine before its Arab occupants were “cleansed”. The On 23 December, Hamas offered to renew the ceasefire, but Israel’s charade was such that its all-out assault on Gaza had been planned six months earlier, according to the Israeli daily Ha’aretz.

Behind this sordid game is the “Dagan Plan”, named after General Meir Dagan, who served with Sharon in his bloody invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Now head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence organisation, Dagan is the author of a “solution” that has seen the imprisonment of Palestinians behind a ghetto wall snaking across the West Bank and in Gaza, effectively a concentration camp. The establishment of a quisling government in Ramallah under Mohammed Abbas is Dagan’s achievement, together with a hasbara (propaganda) campaign relayed through a mostly supine, if intimidated western media, notably in America, that says Hamas is a terrorist organisation devoted to Israel’s destruction and to “blame” for the massacres and siege of its own people over two generations, long before its creation. “We have never had it so good,” said the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Gideon Meir in 2006. “The hasbara effort is a well-oiled machine.” In fact, Hamas’s real threat is its example as the Arab world’s only democratically elected government, drawing its popularity from its resistance to the Palestinians’ oppressor and tormentor. This was demonstrated when Hamas foiled a CIA coup in 2007, an event ordained in the western media as “Hamas’s seizure of power”. Likewise, Hamas is never described as a government, let alone democratic. Neither is its proposal of a ten-year truce as a historic recognition of the “reality” of Israel and support for a two-state solution with just one condition: that the Israelis obey international law and end their illegal occupation beyond the 1967 borders. As every annual vote in the UN General Assembly demonstrates, 99 per cent of humanity concurs. On 4 January, the president of the General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto, described the Israeli attack on Gaza as a “monstrosity”.

When the monstrosity is done and the people of Gaza are even more stricken, the Dagan Plan foresees what Sharon called a “1948-style solution” – the destruction of all Palestinian leadership and authority followed by mass expulsions into smaller and smaller “cantonments” and perhaps finally into Jordan. This demolition of institutional and educational life in Gaza is designed to produce, wrote Karma Nabulsi, a Palestinian exile in Britain, “a Hobbesian vision of an anarchic society: truncated, violent, powerless, destroyed, cowed... Look to the Iraq of today: that is what [Sharon] had in store for us, and he has nearly achieved it.”

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi is an American writer on Palestine. She has a Jewish mother and an Iraqi Muslim father. “Holocaust denial is anti-Semitic,” she wrote on 31 December. “But I’m not talking about World War Two, Mahmoud Ahmedinijad (the president of Iran) or Ashkenazi Jews. What I’m referring to is the holocaust we are all witnessing and responsible for in Gaza today and in Palestine over the past 60 years... Since Arabs are Semites, US-Israeli policy doesn’t get more anti-Semitic than this.” She quoted Rachel Corrie, the young American who went to Palestine to defend Palestinians and was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer. “I am in the midst of a genocide,” wrote Corrie, “which I am also indirectly supporting and for which my government is largely responsible.”

Reading the words of both, I am struck by the use of “responsibility”. Breaking the lie of silence is not an esoteric abstraction but an urgent responsibility that falls to those with the privilege of a platform. With the BBC cowed, so too is much of journalism, merely allowing vigorous debate within unmovable invisible boundaries, ever fearful of the smear of anti-Semitism. The unreported news, meanwhile, is that the death toll in Gaza is the equivalent of 18,000 dead in Britain. Imagine, if you can.

Then there are the academics, the deans and teachers and researchers. Why are they silent as they watch a university bombed and hear the Association of University Teachers in Gaza plea for help? Are British universities now, as Terry Eagleton believes, no more than “intellectual Tescos, churning out a commodity known as graduates rather than greengroceries”?

Then there are the writers. In the dark year of 1939, the Third Writers’ Congress was held at Carnegie Hall in New York and the likes of Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein sent messages and spoke up to ensure the lie of silence was broken. By one account, 3,500 jammed the auditorium and a thousand were turned away. Today, this mighty voice of realism and morality is said to be obsolete; the literary review pages affect an ironic hauteur of irrelevance; false symbolism is all. As for the readers, their moral and political imagination is to be pacified, not primed. The anti-Muslim Martin Amis expressed this well in Visiting Mrs Nabokov: “The dominance of the self is not a flaw, it is an evolutionary characteristic; it is just how things are.”

If that is how things are, we are diminished as a civilised society. For what happens in Gaza is the defining moment of our time, which either grants the impunity of war criminals the immunity of our silence, while we contort our own intellect and morality, or gives us the power to speak out. For the moment I prefer my own memory of Gaza: of the people’s courage and resistance and their “luminous humanity”, as Karma Nabulsi put it. On my last trip there, I was rewarded with a spectacle of Palestinian flags fluttering in unlikely places. It was dusk and children had done this. No one told them to do it. They made flagpoles out of sticks tied together, and a few of them climbed on to a wall and held the flag between them, some silently, others crying out. They do this every day when they know foreigners are leaving, believing the world will not forget them.