Nelson Mandela – the greatest man of our era?

Mandela imprisoned 1964 as a terrorist and released in 1990, at age 71. Elected president of South Africa in 1994, served until 1999

South Africa: UK PM Margaret Thatcher, in 1987, said “the ANC is a typical terrorist organisation … anyone who thinks it is going to run the government in South Africa is living in cloud-cuckoo land”. The USA in support of the apartheid regime in South Africa decreed that the ANC were ‘notorious’ terrorists and they with Nelson Mandela (when he was ninety) was unbelievably officially still listed as a terrorist by them until 2008!

The media always promote two concepts don’t they?

That Palestinian Hamas is ‘proscribed’ (in UK terminology) or ‘designated’ (in US terminology) as a bunch of terrorists. That Jewish Israel is a legitimate country under unwarranted persistent attack with a right to defend itself.

Is either of these concepts actually valid though?

How does any group get categorised as being ‘terrorist’ then? Well, in the US, the Treasury or State Departments simply decree it don’t they? No debate about it, just an executive decision & verdict behind closed doors in the dead of night, in their case? One of the essential criteria used is that there is foreign based activity threatening the security & economic interests of the United States? Hamas is so designated (as of seventeen years ago) so one might legitimately ask then, in what respect has the US, an authoritarian state, been aggressed, when the organisation’s cause is restricted to Palestine – surely nothing to do with the USA?

In Britain our Home Secretary (positively NOT our elected parliament of course) is the decision maker on whom are to be deemed as statuary terrorists, but it is certainly NOT defined what terrorism actually is. Hamas is so designated (as of thirteen years ago) so one might legitimately ask then, in what respect has the UK been protected against terrorism, when the organisation’s cause is restricted to Palestine (and is officially designated here as “aims to end Israeli occupation in Palestine”) – surely nothing to do with the UK?

Hamas won the Palestinian parliament legislative election some eight years ago (to the chagrin of the US & Israel). Its legitimacy is not in question then, and Hamas is definitively NOT a terrorist organisation as far as China, Russia, Turkey, Iran, and some other Arab nations are concerned.

Turning to Israel then. They were gifted land in 1948 taken from Palestinians (but that was agreed internationally). They immediately wasted no time in expanding their borders when conducting a civil war. They subsequently attacked their neighbours nearly fifty years ago in the Six Day War, and took over massively more land, much of which they have retained, established settlements in, or like Gaza kept control over ever since . They attracted an enormous population of Jews, particularly from Europe (Jewish population now some six million, the world’s largest, and eighty percent of the population), so they coveted land. They had also captured the historic holy City of Jerusalem and subsequently illegally declared it to be their Capital no less – when the international community to this day classify it as an ‘occupied’ land. When their occupied land’s resistance has flared-up, it has always been met with an iron fist, with inappropriate force, with excessive killing of non-combatants, and with apparent disregard for international law – did the Israelis learn it all from the Nazis we wonder?

The Israelis current campaign against the population of Gaza has demonstrated again a level of evil disregard for the fate of the innocents that has provoked even condemnation as ‘criminal acts’ from the United Nations’ General Secretary. The Palestinians in Gaza have no army, no airforce, no navy, and no military budget. The Israeli military reportedly have calculated the ‘minimum’ food requirement to stop massive population starvation and that is all they will allow in through their rigorously controlled entry points of Gaza? There is NO freedom of movement for the Gazans, in or out by ship or land or air. Jailed imprisoned people historically build tunnels; Gazans build tunnels as well? French resistance fighters gave their lives to defeat the Nazi occupiers; Hamas resistance fighters give their lives to defeat the Israeli oppressors?

How has Israel got away with it for so long you might ask? It can’t simply be their impressive PR machine can it? No, definitely not, it is because of ‘unconditional’ support and ‘unlimited’ resources from America, home of nearly six million Jews themselves you see, (and to a lesser extent Britain, though with only three hundred thousand resident Jews, but we created Israel with America didn’t we, so there you go?). Why is all that protectionism there for goodness sake? It is because they are Israeli Jews with a religion which suffered the holocaust, while their Palestinian opponents are Arab Islamists with a religion we in the West fear and would like to suppress.

A few days ago the Israelis claimed that an ‘innocent’ soldier had been “kidnapped” by the enemy Hamas (not ‘captured’ you will notice) – indeed the most powerful man in the world, the so called President of the United States, said it was a “barbaric” act? It was a subterfuge/mistake of course – the man was actually killed on fighting duty, possibly even by his own side. The Israelis used the incident as a public excuse to escalate their action. No subsequent international condemnation of Israeli mis-information and worldwide publicly promotion with consequential heightened military response of course?

A female member of the British Government’s Cabinet no less, and a Lord to boot, has now dramatically resigned over Gaza; she says because she finds her own Government’s policies in supporting Israel distressing and ‘morally indefensible’.

The standard response to ANY adverse comment against Israel (as it will be against this post) is that the person responsible is clearly anti-Semitic. It is difficult though to make this accusation stick against a prominent educated English born politician, who happens to be of Asian origin, a Muslim woman (and the first of them to serve at this level), so she is suddenly attacked in a hatchet job as being an incompetent overambitious unsafe working-class lightweight attention seeking failed politician, irked by having previously been sacked from a better job and recently missed out on promotion. Ah well, not anti-Semitic at least, but completely wrong to say Israel should have been railed back by Britain?

[Should the Israeli undoubted unparallel aggression & flouting of international law, abuse of the rules of combat, over the past five decades be classified as terrorism? Do they really ‘have a right to exist’ or not attacked, within their illegally expanded & occupied land borders? That is a problematical question isn’t it?]