17 September 2010 By Reason Wafawarova COMMENTATORS, satirists and writers from both the
right and the left have covered extensive ground in
interrogating the declared intentions of Western wars
as captained by the United States of America —
interrogation that often endeavours to reveal the
concealed intentions; in reality the real cause for
these wars. The official line for invading Vietnam has been
discredited emphatically over the years, and that for
the invasion of Iraq is now a common joke that even
junior school kids find quite laughable, and all
serious thinking people do not believe that the
Western forces occupying Afghanistan today are looking
for Osama bin Laden and his much publicised Al-Qaeda. The official line for the ruinous economic
sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by Western countries in
2001 is the assertion that the Government of President
Mugabe did not observe the rule of law, inter alia
property rights and the general human rights regime. This pretence has literally collapsed under the new
circumstances of an inclusive Government that includes
the two MDC formations, and we have seen a shift where
the new official line for the illegal sanctions is the
fresh allegation that President Mugabe is not adhering
to MDC-T demands through the GPA, whatever they are
and whenever they come. According to Arthur Mutambara, the only unresolved
issues are to do with three individuals whose
appointments are either contested or unimplemented and
these are Johannes Tomana, Gideon Gono and Roy Bennet.
How this domestic issue warrants international
sanctions is something only a person like Barrack
Obama can understand. It is well-known by all serious analysts that the
underlying cause for the conflict between Zimbabwe and
the West is the 2000 reclamation of colonially stolen
lands for the benefit of landless indigenous masses.
The resultant strategy to reverse this "violation
of property rights" has for a decade been the regime
change shenanigans from Western countries — the
compendium of Western intolerance and racial supremacy
expressed through omnifarious rhetoric from the
Western sponsored MDC-T on human rights and the
all-glorious liberties said to come limitlessly with
Western style democracy. The official story about the Israeli invasion of
Lebanon in 2006 goes like this: Israel acted in self
defence after Hezbollah, in a cross border attack on
July 12, killed eight of its soldiers and captured two
others. President George W. Bush told the whole world
that Hezbollah attacked Israel and started the crisis. While the narrow facts to this version of events
may be accurate, there are quite a lot of holes in
this official story line. Firstly, the United States and Israel have no known
objection whatsoever to the capture of soldiers and
even to the much more serious crime of kidnapping
civilians. There are numerous documentations that prove beyond
any measure of doubt that Israel has been abducting
civilians for decades, and no one has ever suggested
that Israel should be invaded in response. The upsurge in violence did not start on July 12
and we were never told about this when Israel was
invading Lebanon. It began in Gaza after June 25, when
Hamas captured an Israeli soldier at the border and
also killed two others. That led to a massive
onslaught from Israel in which about 40 Palestinians
in Gaza were killed, and more than 170 were killed
from the Israeli escalation of attacks on June 28
through into July. In fact, Israeli violence more than
quadrupled in just a month. But we are not told that on June 24, just a day
before Hamas captured the one Israeli soldier and
killed two others — we are not told that Israeli
forces abducted two Palestinian civilians in Gaza, a
doctor and his brother. It is documented and is
occasionally mentioned in Western circles, but no one
ever suggested that Israel should be invaded and half
destroyed for it. By this very Western standard, there can be no
justification to the official line from the West that
Lebanon was justly attacked by Israel in self-defence.
The US-Israeli attack on Lebanon was by Western
standards unacceptable, and as such must be condemned
the same way the West condemns Saddam for the 1991
Kuwait invasion. The Western official line understandably omits the
official reasons for the action that was taken by
Hezbollah. One such reason was the exchange of
prisoners, and that was something the majority of
Lebanese people supported and understood very well. In February 2006, about 70 percent of the Lebanese
population, which did not particularly like Hezbollah,
were in favour of the capture of Israeli soldiers to
exchange with prisoners kidnapped by Israel over the
years. These people knew very well that Israel holds a
record of kidnapping and killing civilians in Lebanon
for decades. It is like the convenient omission by the West that
ordinary Zimbabweans are in their majority in favour
of the 2000 land reclamation exercise that ousted
colonial white settler farmers. What we are told as
the official line is that the black farm workers that
worked for these white settler farmers were deeply
opposed to land reforms because the programme
ostensibly took away their jobs. The official reasons for Zimbabwe’s economic
empowerment laws are rarely reported in Western media.
We are never told that the Zimbabwe Government plans
to transfer wealth into the hands of its indigenous
population. Rather we hear that Zimbabwe is engaging in
"unsound policies" that will "scare investors", and we
are told that the Government "wants to take over
people’s hair salons". The second official reason for Hezbollah’s action
was an expression of solidarity and support for the
people of Gaza, who at that time were under bitter
attack from Israel. Hezbollah is about the only Arab entity that
provides meaningful support for the Palestinians
today. If these two reasons were objectively reported in
the West then the general public would more than
likely empathise with Arabs and Hezbollah. So these
official reasons are tactfully omitted by Western
media. There is a glaring omission of the real background
that led to the attacks on Lebanon in July 2006. In
January, Palestinians held a free and fair election
and they voted the ‘‘wrong way’’, electing Hamas to a
majority in Parliament. In the Western concept of democracy for lesser
peoples one is not allowed to vote the wrong way in a
free and fair election. This is why we are told that
the only free and fair election that can ever happen
in Zimbabwe is one that will lead to a win for Morgan
Tsvangirai and his MDC-T party, or conversely one that
will see the back of President Mugabe and the demise
of Zanu-PF. Democracy is fine for the West for as long as
people do what the Westerners say, but not if one
votes for someone the West does not like. So instantly Israel and the United States
instituted very harsh punishment for the Palestinians,
cutting of funding, stepping up atrocities, and
starving them. This is exactly what happened to Zimbabweans after
they overwhelmingly supported the land reform
programme in the 2000 general election; an election
that was won freely and fairly by Zanu-PF, as then
endorsed by Sadc and South Africa, among other
election observers. Funding for developmental projects was terminated,
credit lines were blocked, people were starved, and
industries were forced to close shop so as to cripple
the Zimbabwean economy. Western owned corporations
sabotaged the economy by creating artificial shortages
of basics like fuel, food and crop seeds. Tsvangirai went on to publicly canvass for economic
sanctions against his own country, even making a
passionate public call on South Africa to switch off
power supplies to Zimbabwe. This pretty much is what is meant by "democracy
promotion". In particular, Britain stepped up its
campaign to isolate and starve Zimbabweans; just like
Israel particularly stepped up its crimes in Gaza.
Israeli human rights groups have already described
Gaza as "the biggest prison in the world". So we have this so-called "convergence" programme
being carried out by Israel on the West Bank, a
programme of annexation and cantonisation through
which Israel has been annexing valuable land and major
natural resources, particularly water, and designing
settlement and infrastructure projects so as to break
up the shrinking Palestinian territories into unviable
cantons. This of course is all backed by the United
States, in whose eyes the whole programme is a
"withdrawal". The idea is to separate these cantons from each
other as much as possible, and to make sure that all
these cantons are eventually separated from whatever
tiny corner of Jerusalem. Israel is taking over the
Jordan Valley and they have always enjoyed full US
backing on that, somewhat threatened a bit under
Barrack Obama. All of these US-backed Israeli projects are of
course totally illegal, just like the economic
sanctions on Zimbabwe — standing in gross violation of
both international law and UN Security Council
resolutions and orders. The US foreign policy in particular has no regard
for international law by its definition. The conditions for Palestinians under Israeli
occupation are as harsh and brutal as was slavery and
colonisation — and this has been for years. When some Palestinians occasionally fire Qassam
rockets from Gaza, we are quickly told by the West
that these are terrorist attacks. We are never told
that these attacks are a reaction to Israel’s
continuing atrocities and its takeover, annexation,
and cantonisation programmes. Hamas has repeatedly respected and observed truce
pacts with Israel but Israel reciprocates by carrying
out assassinations, even using fake passports bearing
names of citizens of allied nations like the UK and
Australia. Israel continues to carry out bombings as they did
in December 2008, and they continue with the illegal
cutting off of funds, as well as blocking aid from
coming into Gaza, as they did at the end of May this
year when they attacked aid ships headed for Gaza. Hamas has repeatedly indicated that it is calling
for a long-term indefinite truce and will enter
negotiations on a two state settlement if Israel
commits itself to withdrawing from the occupied
territories. The call has been snubbed by both Israel and the US
the same way the call for the lifting of illegal
economic sanctions on Zimbabwe has been ignored by the
West. The African Union, Sadc and the Non Alligned
Movement have all variously called for the lifting of
these illegal sanctions, while the UN Security Council
has four times refused to endorse the Western illegal
sanctions on Zimbabwe. We were told of the criminality of Hezbollah’s
border actions in 2006 — that they were firing rockets
across the Lebanese-Israeli border. What we are often not told is that the UN has
registered hundreds of Israeli border violations,
over-flights, sonic bombs, and other actions on
essentially a daily basis, but did not record a single
confirmed case of a Hezbollah rocket from May 2000,
when Israel withdrew from Lebanon, up to July 2006,
when Israel started aerial bombings over Lebanon,
apart from a May 28, 2006 firing in retaliation to
Israeli cross-border air strikes, artillery, mortar,
and tank fire. Indeed Hezbollah does not regard Israel as a
legitimate state, but they have said they will accept
whatever Hamas accepts, and that is exactly the same
position with Iran. However, we are told Hezbollah and Iran want Israel
"wiped off the map" and this official line is correct
in its very narrow sense, but we never get to hear
that the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei has declared that Iran will accept whatever
the Arab League adopts over Israel. We never get to hear that Zimbabwe has been sending
delegations to Europe to seek a truce over the
imposition of the ruinous economic sanctions by
Western countries. What is said is that the country
has not carried out "the necessary reforms" a
euphemism for the returning of land reclaimed from
white settler farmers. The progress so far made by the inclusive
Government of Zimbabwe is quite phenomenal for the
local people and the region. Inflation has been tamed
to single digits but that is never reported in its
true context in the few cases it is reported. A record reduction in HIV and Aids prevalence was
recently attributed to poverty and the assertion that
Zimbabwean men were too poor to afford paying for
prostitutes. All the efforts of educating the masses
made over the years by the relevant Ministry of Health
were conveniently ignored. Whatever the Western official line may be — one
simply has to look at the imperial goals of Western
foreign policy and the true intentions cannot be
missed. Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome.
It is homeland or death!! Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can
be contacted on
wafawarova@yahoo.co.uk or reason@ rwafawarova.com
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