June 3-8, 1984 – Anniversary of Operation Blue Star

Use of force to quell the people

Massive damage sustained by the Golden Temple during Operation Blue Star.

Thirty-seven years ago, from June 3-8, 1984, on Indira Gandhi’s orders, the Indian army launched a devastating assault and massacre of innocent Sikhs at the Golden Temple complex in Amritsar, Punjab. Other Gurdwaras were also attacked.

The Illegitimate State of Israel (I): Zionist Terrorism and Crimes in Palestine – 1939-1945

A series published on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of Al Nabka, May 15, 2023

Complied and edited with an introduction by Tony Seed based on the Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem authored by the late Issa Nakhleh

The Illegitimate State of Israel, Part I – 1939-1945 

The Illegitimate State of Israel Part II – 1946 (forthcoming)

The Illegitimate State of Israel, Part III – 1947 (forthcoming)

The Illegitimate State of Israel, Part IV – 1948 (forthcoming)

The Conspiracy to Expel and the Expulsion of Palestinian Arabs, Part V – 1948 (forthcoming)

Introduction

(Updated May 23, 2021) – On May 14, 1948, the Zionist state of Israel was established by unilateral declaration in defiance of the United Nations and international law on the basis of 33 massacres, terrorism and the dispossession and mass expulsion of the indigenous Palestinian people from their land by the foreign-armed Zionist state and its militias with the backing of the great powers, the United States in the first place, as well as Canada. Some 750,000 Palestinians were forced to flee. Palestinians were forced from their lands and homes due to military attacks by Zionist forces, supported by the British and U.S. governments. The Israeli Zionist forces attacked 774 cities and villages, and occupied 80 per cent of the Palestinian soil after killing nearly 15,000 Muslim and Christian civilians.

Of this population, approximately one-third were forced to migrate to the West Bank, another third to the Gaza Strip, and the remainder to neighbouring countries such as Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, registered as refugees with the United Nations and forcibly denied the right of return.

Another 350,000 were dispossessed in 1967 following the Six-Day War during which Israel occupied the Gaza Strip, West Bank, Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights. The number of Palestinians in the Diaspora now numbers over 5 million people. “We must do everything to ensure they [the Palestinians] never do return … The old will die and the young will forget,” said David Ben-Gurion, the founder of Israel, in 1949. But the young ha, both those born in Palestine and those born in Canada, have not forgotten.

For the information of readers, we are serializing in five instalments chapters from the Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem (1999), a 1,000-page work in two volumes by the late Issa Nakhleh*, a distinguished lawyer and statesman, which provide detailed information on the years 1939-1948, as to the nature and methods of the illegitimate Zionist conquest of Palestine of May 15, 1948. These are not otherwise available on the Internet. Much of the information is derived directly from British Colonial files in London. To proceed directly to this exhaustive work, scroll down the page.

LEBANON’S DILEMMA – A revolving identity crisis

On September 1, 1920 French General Henri Gouraud proclaimed from the porch of the Pine Residence in Beirut the creation and independence of the state of Greater Lebanon under the colonial mandate of the League of Nations represented by France. France also received Syria which it separated from Lebanon, while Britain was awarded Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq.

This series of five articles was originally written in January and February this year by Ghassan Kadi. We are publishing it today on the occasion of the centenary of Lebanon to enlighten readers on the historical role played by French colonialism in the sectarian divide-and-rule strategy of the Levant (Greater Syria) and the internal forces in motion at that time and their role today. France and Britain together separated the region into Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq by secret agreement (Sykes-Picot) during World War I, which they received following the war with the defeat of Ottoman Turkey and Germany as “trustee”. The series also brings out the character of the internal institutions established in Lebanon on September 1, 1920 by the armed forces of France.

The ugly truth of the ‘world’s greatest democracy’ for all to see

By NICK LIN

Washington, DC protest against the killing of George Floyd, May 30, 2020.

For twelve days, hundreds of thousands of people have burst out in militant protests in more than 140 cities across the United States against police brutality, impunity, racism and injustice. They mourn the death of George Floyd killed in cold blood by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 25.

Gaelic blessing could be political statement, says Anglican Church

The Church of England has been accused of anti-Irish racism after it refused to allow an Irish language inscription on a gravestone on the basis that Gaelic ‘can cause intense feelings’. The Irishwoman’s family wanted to include the words ‘In ár gcroíthe go deo’ [In our hearts forever] on the grave in Coventry.

How imperial Britain promoted religion to stymie Palestinian nationalism

By SARAH IRVING*

Islam Under the Palestine Mandate: Colonialism and the Supreme Muslim Council, Nicholas E. Roberts, I.B.Tauris (2017)

In the dangerous and inaccurate popular narratives on Palestine, religion – a black-and-white tale of Islam versus Judaism – is often given priority of importance. Religious identities are taken as the simple, unquestioned driving force behind the actions of Palestinians throughout history.

A closer look, of course, reveals the flaws in this image. During the Ottoman period, the people of Palestine might have been more likely to identify themselves in terms of their family, neighbourhood, city or profession, depending on which identity the situation called for at a particular time.

Hypocrisy, hysteria and historical falsification around the attacks against Charlie Hebdo

Freedom of speech of the reactionary ruling classes

By JEAN-DANIEL NOLIN

The terrorist attack against Charlie Hebdo has resulted in a huge wave of sympathy and opposition to terrorist attacks. These just actions are positions of principle, as are the demonstrations of Muslim peoples demanding that the Prophet Muhammad not be caricatured. Blasphemy is a social act – an act directed toward someone else and their beliefs, which all persons whether religious, atheist or agnostic must respect. Without this respect, there is no discussion possible.

As with any event, the bourgeoisie advances its pawns. It presents itself as democratic, defending of freedom of speech, for peace, etc. In reality, it is doing the exact opposite. It muzzles scientists, cuts subsidies to organizations critical of its policies, militarizes the police against its own people, engages more and more in military adventures, etc.

US Empire: Old Testament armed forces

Under the pretext of “religious freedom,” religious zealotry runs rampant in the US military, and among those wishing to deploy it

Philip Giraldi (Feb . 12) – THE connection between America’s wars in the Middle East—and its wars more generally—with the more fundamentalist forms of Christianity in the United States is striking. Opinion polls suggest that the more religiously conservative one is, the more one will support overseas wars or even what many might describe as war crimes. Fully 60 per cent of self-described evangelicals supported torturing suspected terrorists in 2009, for example. That is somewhat puzzling, as Christianity is, if anything, a religion of peace that only reluctantly embraced a “just war” concept that was deliberately and cautiously evolved to permit Christians—under very limited circumstances of imminent threat—to fight to defend themselves.

Blowing smoke

Photo: vortex_amity

Pope Francis: A man of the people with an intellectual side – headline in  the Toronto Star. “New pope, the Argentine earlier known as Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, is complex: a man of social conscience, but with conservative views, too,” writes its foreign affairs editor, blowing smoke.

Truthout, 2010 – On April 20, Argentina’s last dictator, Reynaldo Bignone, was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Jorge Videla, Argentina’s first dictator, was recently accused of 49 forced disappearances, added to an already expansive investigation. In total, nearly 700 people have been indicted for crimes committed a generation ago. The investigations reach beyond the military. The church, too, has been a target. In 2006, Catholic priest Cristian Federico Von Wernich was convicted of human rights abuses, after the father perverted the confession into an interrogation tactic of the torturers who secretly held prisoners. More recently, Argentine investigative journalist Horacio Verbitsky has written a series of articles in the country’s left-leaning daily Pagina 12 accusing Jorge Bergoglio, currently an Argentine cardinal, of participating in the kidnapping of two liberal priests in 1976.

Stop Harper!

By DAVID GREIG

STEPHEN HARPER, now aiming to head a majority government, occupies the well-earned position as head of the anti-social offensive in Canada, and the drive for de facto annexation of Canada to the U.S. empire and and its imperialist wars of aggression. There is every indication that as head of a majority Conservative government he will push much further along the course he has followed since first becoming Prime Minister in 2006. Hence, the importance of stopping Harper from winning the election, stopping him from forming a majority and stopping him if he does win such a majority

He and his anti-social crew present his aim as desirable on the basis that the situation in Canada after his five years as PM is quite acceptable, that he is trustworthy, or at least more so than Michael Ignatieff, that he is the best manager of the economy, but that threats are at hand that require the strong leadership and certainty of a majority Harper government. Such self-serving distortions can only survive and succeed by silencing and marginalizing the experience of Canadians, and particularly the working class, with the destruction of manufacturing, degradation of workers’ security and remuneration, social programs and the natural environment. Meanwhile, ever more is handed over to the very rich and Canada is increasingly annexed to the U.S. empire, with all the attendant militarization, military spending and partnership in crimes of imperialist aggression.