It has got to be said that there was a certainty from day one of the shameful and lost war on Gaza that it had an election-winning guarantee attached to it for an Israeli right-wing Party. It was clear and obvious that the war was used as a fuel to the election as the Israeli media rarely showed images of Palestinians and focused more on the IDF and viewing them as heroes, warriors and champions..

The IDF even set up a Youtube Channel to glorify their so-called achievements. Despite Youtube shutting the channel down because of its concern there were so many complaints soaring in and they were forced to return it. Up to this very day I cannot understand the reason for the channel.. Of course they would not show anything about themselves that can be negative. It is one-sided, completely biased, and (it has to be said) very well staged.

I was just checking Israeli Hareetz and came across an article about a 14-year-old Palestinian boy that was shot dead in Hebron by Israel Border Police. Shocked and disgraced by the way that it was written. Plain, lacks detail, gives the story from the IDF’s point of view, ignoring the Palestinian voices, and isn’t even 9 full lines long. They dealt with it as if it was an announcement and actually the incident is only mentioned in 4 lines! The rest is about what the IDF discovered and what they did. It’s just words so where is the evidence? This is supposed to be Israeli’s biggest news source! Shocking and disturbing in every way!

Now, if this is what the Israeli Media calls “balance” then is it any wonder why Israel and Palestine are in the positions that they’re in?

But my goodness have things changed.

The people of the Arab World want those days back but unfortunately they aren’t the ones that leaders would listen to. People can march the streets and raise their voices to be heard. Heard they are but muted they will be. During the war on Gaza, British journalists went around the streets of Egpyt asking what the Egyptians how they felt – it was almost the same words said over and over again. Ashamed, frustrated, disappointed. They had every reason to be since the rest of the world was doing more than the Arabs.

Robert Fisk sums it up brilliantly:

“To admit that Egypt can’t even open its sovereign border without permission from Washington tells you all you need to know about the powerlessness of the straps that run the Middle East for us.

Open the Rafah gate – or break off relations with Israel – and Egypt’s economic foundations crumble. Any Arab leader who took that kind of step will find that the West’s economic and military support is withdrawn. Without subventions, Egypt is bankrupt…

… It is the corruption that has become embedded in an Egyptian society where the idea of service – health, education, genuine security for ordinary people – has simply ceased to exist. It’s a land where the first duty of the police is to protect the regime,…

…There has developed in Egypt a kind of religious facade in which the meaning of Islam has become effaced by its physical representation. Egyptian civil “servants” and government officials are often scrupulous in their religious observances – yet they tolerate and connive in rigged elections, violations of the law and prison torture”

It’s sad to say that this is all true. That the first people that come to the minds of the leaders are not their own people or their fellow Arabs – it’s the rest of the world, and their pockets of cash. But how can one look at the world if he cannot look at his own people or even listen to them? That is a sign of a failed leadership. Queen Rania launched a YouTube Channel to tackle against Arab stereotypes. But why tackle that first without tackling the issues among the Arab countries first? The world wouldn’t be so negative if the Arabs stood together as one. But they didn’t. They crumbled and the cracks were played with. They were made the laughing stocks of the world.

Norman Finkelstein in an interview:

“How can you expect other people to show respect Arabs if you can’t show respect for yourself?”

“… So many dead, so much destruction, before the bodies are even berried, before the buildings are rebuilt, the person responsible for it you can’t wait to welcome him [Bush], you can’t wait to roll out the red carpet. I can’t respect that…”

“…The Secretary of State [Rice] said it was the birth pangs of a new Middle East. That’s a statement of a freak. A human freak would compare the birth of a child with the destruction of a country, and yet, there are people here who are so anxious to welcome her. They are trying to figure out what the Americans are thinking. They can’t wait for their banquets. How can anyone respect that?…”

“… All the deaths and all the destruction and you can’t wait to welcome him.

“… It’s better to dies on your feet than to walk crawling on you knees”

Norman shows his respect for Hizbollah despite the fact that the Arab Interviewer implicitly implies that the Lebanon War in 2006 was because of Hezbollah.

“My parents went through World War II. Now, Stalin’s regime was not exactly a bed of roses. It was a ruthless and brutal regime, and many people perished. But who didn’t support the Soviet Union when they defeated the Nazis? Who didn’t support the Red Army? In all the countries of Europe which were occupied – who gets all the honors? The resistance. The Communist resistance – it was brutal, it was ruthless. The Communists were not… It wasn’t a bed of roses, but you respect them. You respect them because they resisted the foreign occupiers of their country.”

Hats off to him.

I want to feel sorry for the Arab World but I just feel like they have let themselves, and each other, down. It’s not like the people can do much but it’s the leaders that represent their country. The leaders look to reach out with people furthest away from them and not the ones nearest to them. It’s the leaders that are causing the great divide across the Arab World; ultimately the vulnerability and weakness is stripped bare for the world to play about with. The Arab World that was once proud of it’s’ history has now become a disgrace for its current history.

When will they rise again and how long will they remain silent? Palestine is almost wiped off the map. The real difference in the Arab World comes from Arab the leaders themselves.

The war on “terror”, even though terror exists in all parts of the world, was intensely focused on the Middle East. It’s was the ultimate test of Unity and the leaders crumbled. The leaders crumbled because they could no longer differentiate between those that matter and those that don’t. The leaders have put down their country, their people and their history. Shame on them!

According to Yulia Shtriam, Haifa’s Deputy Mayor and a member of the Party, who happens to be the very the person at the entrance that would not allow Nassar to enter, says her actions were “because of the Arabs’ demonstration and what [the demonstrators] say about [Avigdor] Lieberman,”. Just outside the gathering, left-wing Arab and Jewish activists, united as one, demonstrated against Lieberman and his Party. So the next excuse was “because the Arabs do that to Lieberman”. The inability to see that it was not only Arabs is just one of the many worrying sign of the possible winning party.

The two Journalists trying to shove some sense in the head of Shtriam by explaining that they had nothing to do with the demonstration and that they were there to do their jobs.

Caught on camera the Journalists detained at the entrance despite showing their press cards. Shtriam told them that she couldn’t let them through because she did not invite them. However, other Israeli and foreign Journalists that were not invited made it through without any problem or havoc.

They were there to do what the Journalists were supposed to do and that is to cover the event.. I do not understand where the problem and threat is to justify those actions.

“The reporter and the rest of the demonstrators against the party tried to cause provocation and were asked not to enter the hall and not to disturb the gathering” commented a Yisrael Beiteinu spokesman.

Just because people speak against the regieme does not mean that they are Arabs. It just means that they are people with hearts and minds. It means that they are people that are sick and fed up of this ever-lasting nonsense. It means that they want to live in peace.

They may celebrate and enjoy their victory if they win but the problem of the Party has been established before the winning. Nothing to be too proud of.

Ask senior Israel Defense Force officers about the mass killings of Palestinian civilians and they will give an almost identical answer: The use of massive force was designed to protect the lives of soldiers. Their responses to criticism come across with a calm tone and were well handled as if it was expected.

The large Israeli army entered the narrow strip of land to “plunge” Hamas. Taking high measures and extremes to put in to practice an ethical theory created five years ago to fight terrorism. Professor Asa Khasher explains that the theory justifies the actions committed in Gaza. The Professor of Tel Aviv University who was awarded The Israel Prize Laureate in Philosophy gave details to Israeli source, Hareetz that he gave a green light and claimed that the theory was possible to the IDF.

“The norms followed by the commanders in Gaza were generally appropriate…”

He also clarified that the IDF Chief of Staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, “has been very familiar with our principles from the time the first document was drafted in 2003 to the present.” Kasher goes on further to justify the actions of the IDF by stating that there is no reason for placing the lives of soldiers in danger to simply prevent the killing of civilians who live in the surrounding area of terrorists. His side of the argument simply evolves around that belief; the inability to control the densely populated strip makes it difficult for the soldiers to achieve the military goals but that does not mean that they will not be achieved. Soldiers must do their best. Then there is a priority in protecting the lives of fellow soldiers and after that is avoiding injury of enemy civilians.

“There is no army in the world that will endanger its soldiers in order to avoid hitting the neighbors of an enemy or terrorist.”

True, but actions speak louder than words. Some actions committed by the IDF were, categorically and without a question of doubt, war crimes.

“We in Israel are in a key position in the development of law in this field because we are on the front lines in the fight against terrorism. This is gradually being recognized both in the Israeli legal system and abroad. After the debate before the High Court of Justice on the issue of targeted killings there was no need to revise the document that Yadlin and I drafted even by one comma. What we are doing is becoming the law. These are concepts that are not purely legal, but also contain strong ethical elements.”

So Israel is aware of crimes committed but believes that they could get away with it. Why is that a surprise? How many years have they been at it and been able to change the laws set to allow their actions? Breaking the laws set down by the UN Partion in 1947 and changing the geography to what it is today. It shouldn’t be a suprise that Israel turned down UN orders several time. First in history, but they have been breaking laws for such a long time. They can justify as much “strong ethical elements” but human rights is something that cannot be dismissed.

“The Geneva Conventions are based on hundreds of years of tradition of the fair rules of combat. They were appropriate for classic warfare, where one army fought another. But in our time the whole business of rules of fair combat has been pushed aside. There are international efforts underway to revise the rules to accommodate the war against terrorism. According to the new provisions, there is still a distinction between who can and cannot be hit, but not in the blatant approach which existed in the past. The concept of proportionality has also changed. There is no logic in comparing the number of civilians and armed fighters killed on the Palestinian side, or comparing the number of Israelis killed by Qassam rockets to the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza.”

So knowing and being aware of the gaps in the Geneva Convention most of the crimes committed can be let free as they are not set down yet but may after they have been committed. One begins to wonder worryingly what the next attack by Israel will be like because even places under the not-new provisions that state where not to hit i.e. UN buildings Israel will not follow those rules.

“The soldiers’ lives are endangered by virtue of their very presence in Gaza, by virtue of the fact that we send them to an area where there are enemy snipers and explosives set to go off in areas where the IDF is present. Sending a soldier there to fight terrorists is justified, but why should I force him to endanger himself much more than that so that the terrorist’s neighbor isn’t killed? I don’t have an answer for that. From the standpoint of the state of Israel, the neighbor is much less important. I owe the soldier more. If it’s between the soldier and the terrorist’s neighbor, the priority is the soldier. Any country would do the same.”

Sending a soldier to fight against terrorism is a justification that all depends on the definition of the word. To many people it’s a simply equation Terrorism = Hamas! Going back to the true definition though: an individual, an organization or a state that uses violence against innocent civilians often for political purposes. Now to say that Israel has not committed atrocities against the Palestinians is a naïve and ignorant statement to make. Comparing the UN Partion of 1947 and compare it to the map of Israel and Palestine today it resonates the shocking truth.

Bottom line is neither side is free of guilt and both side will call the other “the Terrorist”

Back in March 2008 Wilders released a controversial and damaging film, Fitna, on Islam. No TV company was willing to broadcast it and some politicians in the Netherlands tried to ban it. To the eyes of many this has gone too far. The Dutch Government feared another ride of the cartoon furore in the Muslim World especially for the Dutch abroad. The film “Fitna” juxtaposed pages from the Qur’an with scenes of torture, violence and linking to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

When a TV interview explained the impact that this film had on people Wilders replied with “It’s not the aim of the movie but people might be offended, I know that. So, what the hell? It’s their problem, not my problem”.

In June that same year the Authority overturned the ruling of the Dutch Prosecution Services despite all the hundreds of complaints that poured through. Last Wednesday the court reasoned that the Criminal Prosecution did not argue with Wilders right to freedom of expression and confirmed that it purely based its decision on the standards set by the European Court of Human Rights. Now, he will face his prosecution.

Incredibly, the 45-year-old peroxide leader of the extremist Freedom Party PVV does not understand why the second highest legal authority in the country, the Amsterdam Appeals Court, allowed his criminal prosecution to go ahead. Simple, clear and obvious – it’s for the very reason that he has made himself an icon – for inciting hate, discriminating Muslims and comparing Islam to Nazism.

“This was the last thing I expected. The fact that I can no longer speak openly but have to go before the court makes this a very black day, not just for me but for freedom of expression in this country” was Wilders “stunned” response to the “accusations” made despite it all being backed up with startling evidence. The very film that he made ever so proudly has been the biggest evidence to play against him.

“What I do is to express my opinion on behalf of half a million people who voted for me and who think it should be possible to critise Islam. We are fed up with “Islamisation” of the Netherlands”. There is a clear line between what you can say and what you cannot say, the disturbing part is that he can not see that line.

To stand aginst the second highest power in the country and demand respect for your point of views that are disrespectful to others, then why is it such a suprise. Just because things have been quiet for a while does not mean that it is acceptable. Everyone has that Freedom of expression. Everyone can express themselves but no one can not make up the rules of Freedom. Those that do will suffer the consequences and that is what Wilders is about to learn. Freedom is a peaceful part of life and peace is a place where the narrow-minded fools will never be able to find. Peace does not lie to getting rid of a race or rid of religion. Peace is from within: acceptance, understanding, and respect. None of which Wilders has.

This story is somewhat ironic: the very man complaining that his freedom is being taken away is the very same man that took away the freedom for Muslims by banning the Qur’an.

“Mr Wilders is a very gifted and talented politician. All TV programmes are about his movie: he knows how to play with the media, how to dominate the public debate. The problem was and is that he is a monomaniac, but not in a pejorative sense” was how Bart Jan Spruyt, a TV Presenter, described Wilders whom he met when Wilders set up the Freedom Group. Those days of the PVV were short lived, “I have to admit it was the most naive thing I’ve ever done in my life.”