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30th Anniversary of the Sabra and Shatilla Masscres: A Day of Infamy for Israel and its Supporters

Litany of Israelis bear testament to land grab

Friday, September 14, 2012

Nurit Tinari-Modai of the Israeli embassy (Letters Sep 8) takes your correspondent Dan Buckley to task for suggesting that Israel’s 1967 attack on its Arab neighbours was a bid to grab land and resources.

Her suggestion, that "the war was forced on Israel", flies in face of the facts.

That the Arabs had no intention of attacking Israel, and that the Zionist state was not in danger, is borne out by the statements of Israel’s leaders: In 1968, Chief of Staff Yitsak Rabin said he did not believe Egypt wanted war and that Egyptian troops in Sinai "...would not have been enough to unleash an offensive againstIsrael. [Nasser] knew it and we knew it."

Mordecai Bentov, a member of Israel’s war-time cabinet, said: "The entire story of the danger of extermination was invented in every detail and exaggerated a posteriori to justify the annexation of new Arab territory." In 1972, Gen Haim Bar-Lev said Israel was "...not threatened with genocide..." before the war, and that "... we had never thought of such a possibility".

Other generals, such as Ezer Weizmann, Matetiyahu Peled, and Chaim Herzog, voiced similar views on the war.

In 1982, prime minister Menachem Begin said of Egypt’s Nasser: "We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him."

Charlie Murphy
Dundrum
Dublin 16

JOHNNY BARBER - COUNTERPUNCH

On average, one US soldier dies everyday. Not an enormous sum, unless it is your mother, father, son or daughter that has perished. Few Americans notice. Afghan loses are not reported.

ELEVEN YEARS LATER, we are still at war. Bullets, mortars and drones are still extracting payment. Thousands, tens of thousands, millions have paid in full. Children and even those yet to be born will continue to pay for decades to come.

On a single day in Iraq last week there were 29 bombing attacks in 19 cities, killing 111 civilians and wounding another 235. On Sept 9th, reports indicate 88 people were killed and another 270 injured in 30 attacks all across the country. Iraq continues in a seemingly endless death spiral into chaos. In his acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination for President, Obama claimed he ended the war in Iraq, well… not quite.

The city of Fallujah remains under siege. Not from US troops, but from a deluge of birth defects that have plagued families since the use of depleted uranium and white phosphorus by US forces in 2004. No government studies have provided a direct link to the use of these weapons because no government studies have been undertaken, and none are contemplated.

Dr. Samira Alani, a pediatric specialist at Fallujah General Hospital, told Al Jazeera,

John Molyneux - Irish Anti-War Movement committee member

[N.B - this article is the view of the author and does not necessarily represent those of movement as a whole]

One of the strengths of the Irish Anti-War Movement (and, it should be said, of the Stop the War Coalition in Britain) is the clear stand it has taken against Islamophobia, as both a condition and a consequence of its alliance with anti- war elements in the muslim community.in mobilising against the Iraq War and the ‘War on Terror’.

This is important because Islamophobia has become the main, or one of the main, forms of racism (along with Anti-Gipsy racism in Eastern Europe) in contemporary Europe.

Historically racism has passed through several phases each building on but also modifying the previous phase: 1) anti-black racism that arose out of and justified the slave trade in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries; 2) the racism of imperialism (including anti- Irish racism, at its height in the late 19th and early 20th century; 3) anti – immigrant racism, especially in the second half of the 20th century. The first emphasised the sub-human and savage nature of black people so as to exclude them from the ‘rights of man’ being fought for by the European bourgeoisie at this time. The second shifted the emphasis to “childlike” and “immature” character of non- European peoples to justify their being taken under the wing of their colonial masters. The third focussed less on biological inferiority and more on cultural difference, making the economically required presence of immigrants in Europe into a “problem”.