Sometimes I feel I talk too much about the connections between the Israel/Palestine issue and the Iraq issue. But it is so damn depressing that Bush & Co. ignored the obvious and didn’t tackle the former, thereby defusing tensions in the Middle East. Instead, they let the Israel/Palestine conflict deteriorate into its lowest point in history and then went after Iraq. By doing this, they have, in the words of one pundit, turned a despised dictator into the new Sala’adin.
As an example of how this is playing out, here is an article by Danny Rubeinstein on how the war is being viewed by the Palestinians. Of course, the Israeli right was gung-ho on this war because they felt the rapid defeat of Saddam would intimidate the Palestinians into accepting Sharon’s bantustan state solution. Well, that is working out well.
From the article:
“A popular poet named Tawfiq Amarana last week published a poem in the organ of the Palestinian Authority Al-Hayat al-Jadeeda. Written in street language, the poem was in honor of Umm Qasr (which means ‘mother of the fortress’):”
“Ho, people! America’s flags are seen to be lies / When justice triumphs, the falsehoods remain / The lie has a short rope / Ho, Bush, lies are doltish, without a leg to stand on, with no explanations / Ho, people! Everyone knows the aggressor’s fate, he ends up in the mud and doesn’t know it / Umm Qasr mocked your father, ho, Bush / Because not everyone who mounts a steed is a horseman, ho, son of Texas!”