Facts and Fiction: Of Course, We Remember Rachel Corrie

Al-Haifi Blog 2: Facts and Fiction: Of Course, We Remember Rachel Corrie

Facts and Fiction: The Tide Begins to Turn against the Israeli Lobby

Al-Haifi Blog 3: Facts and Fiction: The Tide Begins to Turn against the Israeli Lobby

The Tide Begins to Turn against the Israeli Lobby

The United States of America has been pursuing policies that are often dictated by various interest groups that have their own organs dedicated to insuring that these interests influence Congressional or Executive decisions on major issues of Government policy. It is part of the democratic process and in more ways than one it is a healthy sign of democracy at work. But as of late, this sort of phenomena has led to many leading American scholars, academicians, political thinkers, journalists and other elements of the society raising questions as to how much such influence should be allowed in conducting political affairs. Perhaps no such organ of influence peddling has aroused the attention of such skeptics as that of the Pro-Israel lobby. Indeed, no influence peddlers have enjoyed so much control of United States Government policy as the Israel lobby. To get a very good feel of this influence and the unfavorable consequences this has had on directing American policy one must read the recent study produced by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt called “The Israel Lobby”. This study is available in the internet in long form (issued by the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011/$File/rwp_06_011_walt.pdf) and an edited version issued by the London Review of Books (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html). This observer must attest that no report or study has ever dealt with this issue in such detail and frankness and with strong authority as this study and it should be read by anyone who really wants to get an inside view of this powerful machinery of the International Zionist Establishment and the bearing it has had in wrongly directing American foreign policy. Note that the report has left no stone unturned in showing the moral as well as the tangible costs this has had on American foreign policy.The most convincing aspect of the study is that it wholly relies on the sayings, writings and doings of the elements that have come to shape this lobby and its supporters and therefore its contents can neither be disputed or questioned. Even those who have sought to play down the significance of the report or discredit it are unable to contest any of the topics covered or the contents. The study highlights the background of the Lobby and how it has developed into the overriding influence in the shaping of US foreign policy in the Middle East for the last sixty years. Reading the report clearly shows that the authors knew that they were touching upon a highly controversial issue, which was bound to raise a hell of a storm among the elements of the Lobby. Nevertheless as well known scholars in their field, they felt that it was about time someone did something that would increase the American public’s awareness of the impact that the Lobby has had in negatively influencing American foreign policy. The report starts off with noting the exorbitant cost that the overzealous support to Israel has been to the American taxpayer, which accumulated to US $ 140 billion over the years (without mentioning the other indirect costs like the War in Iraq – another product of the efforts of the Lobby and the incalculable cost of leaked intelligence and other by products of the work of the Israel lobby). In conclusion the report indicates the need to look seriously at the negative impact of submitting to the wishes of the Israeli lobby and the need to find ways to circumvent it. Otherwise, the United States is rapidly becoming a rouge state in itself!

Of Course, We Remember Rachel Corrie

For all the ugliness that the current White House administration and the Neo-con/Zionist Establishment represent, there are indeed shining beacons that remind us and the rest of the world that there is still really a lot of latent and apparent good left in America. If not for anything else worth citing, Rachel Corrie is the embodiment of all that good and more and still remains to many people who love freedom, hate oppression and despise tyranny, a shining beacon of human rights advocacy that will always be looked upon for strength and determination to challenge all the rotten evil that has come to eat away at anything that may be called half way decent and human in this world. It is not an easy thing to forget Rachel Corrie, although three years has passed since her untimely and tragic death. Three years have passed and to this day every effort is being made to erase her existence and the tragic memory of her untimely and brutal murder by the ugly Zionist ethnic cleansing machine, which she bravely challenged, armed with nothing but her moral values and unlimited courage. Yes, Rachel Corrie was a martyr in all the implications of the word. She gave away the most that any one can give for any cause and she sacrificed her life, which could have been free of pain and agony and might have even been extravagant. In Rachel's mind, to live in extravagance while there are people in the world facing the worst kind of racial and ethnic injustice is not human and an escape from the reality of the madness that has taken over this world. Rachel Corrie saw in the Palestine problem an issue worth sacrificing everything for, because human suffering unleashed by other fellow men is not welcome in the kind of world that Rachel Corrie believes we should live in. Rachel Corrie believed in the universal brotherhood of mankind and that oppression against a people based on racial or ethnic myths is simply hogwash that is unbearable and un-Godly. Ms Corrie was protesting the destruction of the homes of innocent Palestinian civilians, so that the land could be cleared for Zionist settlements that aim to turn the Holy Land into an elegant suburbia with all the fancy materialistic polishing of modern "western" civilization – with the audacity of making the rest of the world believe that this is God's will. All God fearing men and women know that God is far above than to let himself be the champion of a monstrous injustice that has been defiant of all Devine and man-made laws. Rachel Corrie was insistent on a different kind of justice. Her justice says that human beings should never be forcibly deprived of homes they and generations of their ancestors have been living in since any history has ever been written. Her God and the God of all decent peace loving people throughout the world say such oppression must be ceased and punished because it means brutality, theft, terror and injustice in all their manifestations.
Yes, Rachel Corrie could never be forgotten, even if the New York Theater Workshop cows down to Zionist lobby demands that the theatrical masterpiece work promoted by Vanessa Redgrave and produced by the Royal Court Theatre, "My Name is Rachel Corrie", should be postponed indefinitely from showing in New York. This is how America rewards a true heroine of its own, who gave her life to an American Caterpillar tractor provided by the US Government to one of the most oppressive regimes of all times. Why? Because Rachel Corrie really represented what America should have been all about and the ruling establishment in the US simply could not stomach such idealism.
This is what Robert Fisk of the Independent (UK) had to say about Rachel: "An American heroine, Rachel earned no brownie points from the Bush administration which bangs on about courage and freedom from oppression every few minutes. Rachel’s was the wrong sort of courage and she was defending the freedom of the wrong people."
No, Rachel we will never forget you and will continue the fight where you left off with everything at our disposal, including our lives if necessary.
May she rest in peace and may her relatives find justice against the murderous perpetrators who insisted that freedom and human rights are out of context in their chauvinistic plans and designs for the New World, as they see it.