Palestine Think Tank
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Mozhgan Savabieasfahani – Who Cares More for Afghans' safety?
Posted: 18 Dec 2009 04:25 PM PST
Who cares more for Afghans' safety? Do Afghans themselves care more, or do the U.S. and European occupiers care more? Many mainstream media would have you believe that the occupiers care more. For example, see the December 17th story on the BBC, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8417964.stm).
Can anyone really claim that French and Polish lives mattered more to their Nazi occupiers than to the occupied French and Polish themselves? The absurdity of such claims should be quickly apparent. But is it really apparent, when the U.S. and Europeans are doing the occupying?
Today's BBC reports on an Afghan "market bombing" that was presumably being carried out by a motorbike carrying two men, heading straight toward a crowded market. The "two men" who supposedly were carrying out the bombing and their affiliations are not known.
The first question that arises in my mind is: who benefits from chaos and outright murder of Afghan (or Iraqi for that matter) populations? Do Afghans benefit, or do the military occupiers benefit? Does anyone wonder how occupations perpetually justify themselves as a police force trying to create "law and order" among ungrateful native populations?
Surprisingly (or not so surprisingly), many of the articles we see in the mainstream media are "spun" in a manner to make the reader think that military occupation forces are the real champions concerned with local population safety. The indigenous population, fighting the occupation, are often portrayed as wild maniacs. They are portrayed making the lives of their own people unsafe and bloody, for no good reason. What is at work here is the Western-coined, highly polished concept of a "spin". The spin is telling the story of a brutal military occupation in a manner to plead for sympathy for the occupiers, while legitimizing violence inflicted on the locals who resist an illegal and unpopular occupation.
What is a "spin", you ask? To put a "spin" on an issue or a story is to discuss it in a manner to enhance certain facets of that story while suppressing other aspects. It is a practice that often culminates in complete distortion of the truth and manipulation of the mainstream public. American mainstream media is notorious for utilizing the "spin" method of public manipulation and manufacturing of public perception.
Hence, the U.S. public's total unawareness, until very recently, of the fact that it is indeed Israel that is occupying Palestinian land, and not the other way around. Many other obvious misinformation which the general U.S. public suffers from is the result of the manner in which the news is "groomed", "spun", or "massaged" by the mainstream media before delivery to its consumers.
Stories that claim the occupation forces to be the champions of humanity, or angels bringing only safety to the occupied population, are not uncommon. Many similar stories are delivered to the U.S. public about Israel. How can you expect us to believe that soldiers occupying Palestine are there to stop "the violence" and establish democracy?
From Iraq to Afghanistan to Palestine, chaos and disorder serves the occupation forces. Those who perpetuate chaos and disorder are more likely to be connected to the occupation than they are to the local unarmed civilians.
Have occupation forces really conducted bombings and blamed "the natives" for it? The answer is yes.
Yes, in 1950-51, "In attempts to portray the Iraqis as anti-American and to terrorize the Jews, the Zionists planted bombs in the U.S. Information Service library and in synagogues. Soon leaflets began to appear urging Jews to flee to Israel. . . ." (Source: Ropes of Sand: America's Failure in the Middle East, by Wilbur Crane Eveland; New York: W.W. Norton, 1980).
Yes, in 1954, shortly after occupying a large chunk of Palestine, Israel secretly planted bombs in Egypt to scare the West to death. Israel firebombed a post office in Alexandria, they bombed the U.S. Information Agency libraries in Alexandria and Cairo, and they bombed a British-owned theater. According to the historian Shabtai Teveth, Israel bombed these places "to undermine Western confidence in the existing [Egyptian] regime by generating public insecurity and actions to bring about arrests, demonstrations, and acts of revenge, while totally concealing the Israeli factor. The team was accordingly urged to avoid detection, so that suspicion would fall on the Muslim Brotherhood, the Communists, 'unspecified malcontents' or 'local nationalists'." (Source: Ben-Gurion's spy: the story of the political scandal that shaped modern Israel, by Shabtai Teveth; Columbia University Press, 1996, page 81)
Thousands of people have died and are dying in occupied Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine as a result of foreign invaders' direct bombing, or bombings that are blamed on "the natives". The ultimate responsibility for such devastations are on the shoulders of the occupying forces for having created those conditions in the first place. Destruction of monuments like Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf, which were cared for and cherished for over 900 years– until five months after the American occupation– will always ring uneasy to an unbiased mind.
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Palash Biswas
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http://nandigramunited-banga.blogspot.com/
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