9/11: Who Benefits?

The leader of the Zionist party “Likud” and former “Israeli” Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has described the 9/11 attacks as “very good for Israel.”

“We have benefited from the attacks on the twin towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, as well as from the American war in Iraq.  Those events tilted American public opinion in our favour, “- said the leader of the Zionist right.

“We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq. These events swung American public opinion in our favor,” said the leader of the Zionist right.

His words quoted by Jewish newspaper “Ma’ariv”, the Palestinian Information Center reports.  Netanyahu made the comments recently during a conference at Bar-Ilan University on the future of Occupied Jerusalem.

In a televised interview soon after the landmark 9/11 attack, Netanyahu remarked that “this is good for Israel,’ but prevaricated when asked by the interviewer how he could describe a horrible act as being good.

The Palestinian Information Center points out in this connection that in 2001, former head of Zionist regime Ariel Sharon was said that “the Jewish people control America and the Americans knew it.”

Kavkaz Center

 

Beauty and Brutality

This post from Umkahlil’s blog archive touched me deeply. A story of lofty nobility and base criminality, no less…

umkahlil: Kamil Nasir: Fighting on the Side of Beauty

It was not only childhood memories that pressed. Others, more recent ones, came. I recalled an incident, early after the 1967 War, when my husband and I accompanied our cousin Kamal Nasir, Palestinian nationalist and poet, on a visit to West Jerusalem. He needed to go there to settle a traffic violation fine. After years of separation we were excited and apprehensive to find ourselves, once again, in West Jerusalem, inaccessible to us since 1948. Jerusalem was and still is at the core of every Palestinian’s life, as a reality and as a symbol of our belonging to the land, and like children happy to be back at the scene of our youth we set out on a moving journey of memories .

Hanna and Kamal were exchanging stories and anecdotes of growing up in Jerusalem, their old haunts, Cinema Rex, the coffee shops, the YMCA where they played tennis, where Hanna learned how to type, where they attended concerts given by the Palestine Symphony and where the Palestinian musician Salvador Anita gave his memorable organ recitals. They remembered how once a year Jewish musicians from the Symphony, under the direction of Arnita, would come from Jerusalem to Birzeit College (now Birzeit University) to perform at commencement exercises with the school choir in which Kamal, with his warm tenor voice, was an enthusiastic singer.

I remember, as if it were yesterday, how during that same visit to
Jerusalem with Kamal we saw a little Israeli girl crossing the street, happily carrying her violin, confident and at peace with herself and the world. Noticing her Kamal, the committed humanist, known for his love of children and of music, looked at us, looked back at her and in the grand manner of the orator that he was, his face radiating compassion, said: “Look at her, a mere child, carrying her violin, her music. How can I, as a Palestinian leader, label this Israeli child an enemy. How can I disregard her people’s humanity even if they have dispossessed me of my country?” His words carried with them the ardent need for peace, and a hidden yearning for a Jerusalem he had once known.

 

Glory

To Jenin

After the victory
back home
the brave soldiers
broke all the mirrors
to avoid the gaze of the last witness.

Reza Hiwa, translated by Isabelle Romaine