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 or visit www.rwafawarova.com

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