End Both Occupations....

[Violet_Crumble]

by Rania Masri
October 09, 2003

Soldiers ripping walls apart with bullets, destroying buildings, killing families – all as they search for ‘terrorists.’ Men and boys picked up by soldiers, thrown into make-shift prison facilities for weeks, months, without communication with their families, without charges, without a trial. Families detained at checkpoints, held back by barbed wire, cement blocks, and tanks, held back in their own cities. Journalists harassed, threatened, and killed. The U.S. media ignore the deaths of all but the soldiers. Millions lack basic services, with the future looking dimmer. Throughout, the violence against the occupiers is presented by the occupiers as separate from the occupation itself. And, throughout, the bill for the occupation comes from U.S. tax-payers.

Iraq? Or the Palestinian Territories?

It is difficult to differentiate. The U.S. occupation of Iraq and the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip become more similar daily, and the occupations themselves are linked.

View from the occupied lands

How are they similar? The most glaring similarity is the physical occupation itself: 140,000 U.S. troops (and 11,600 British troops, and a scattering of smaller troops from other countries) occupy Iraq; tens of thousands of Israeli troops occupy the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (leaving out the Israeli occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights and the Lebanese Cheba’a Farms). (Note: no record of the exact number of the Israeli occupation forces is released by the Israeli government.) These troops bring with them their armament, tanks, helicopters, and their trigger-easy soldiers.

• The Iraqi dead / the Palestinian dead don’t matter – to the occupiers

In both Occupied Iraq and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the people themselves, and specifically their deaths, are of little significance to the occupiers.


http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=4324

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. violence like this

causes terrorism. It does NOT stop it. It creates more hate and a thirst for vengence. Before anyone accuses me of anti-sematism, let me say that I support the Israelis and Palestinians who have been working on a compromise despite all the violence. There ARE people on both sides willing to live together in peace. Let us hope that they are given a chance to let their plan work.

[bemildred]

2. It is the primary cause.

Although economic and social repression will work too.
But to really get people pissed off you need some killing,
maiming, vandalism, and beatings.

[Violet_Crumble]

4. That sounds more logical to me...

..than the alternative theory flailing round a bit further down from yr post. It's the pissed off people who are victims of economic and social repression etc that become the footsoldiers...

Violet...

[Fight_n_back]

3. Violence doesn't cause terrorism

What did the US ever do to Saudi Arabia? They hit us HARD in response to our bankrolling their country with sweetheart oil deal and American blood protecting their borders.

Terrorists aren't freedom fighters, they are serial killer cults and the members are recrutied from the same class as the Moonies and the CIA, bored university students. The Moonies get the philosophy students, the CIA gets the alcoholics and the terrosits get the thrill killers.

[Aidoneus]

5. 'What did the US ever do to Saudi Arabia'

besides unconditionally backing al-Saud? If somebody backed the smothering thugs and corrupt hypocrites of their variety over my neighborhood, I'd want to hit them also. The al-Sauds themselves did not, but rather people who despise them as well.

[IndianaGreen]

6. The US kept troops in Saudi Arabia

for the sole purpose of protecting our oil interests there, as well as the corrupt monarchy in power.

Osama bin Laden is an avowed enemy of the Saudi monarchy.

What did the US ever do to Saudi Arabia? They hit us HARD in response to our bankrolling their country with sweetheart oil deal and American blood protecting their borders.

It wasn't the Saudi government that attacked the US on 9/11, unless that's the new party line that is coming out of the Sharon government nowadays.

Terrorists aren't freedom fighters

I agree! Except that the real terrorists are Israel and the United States for their criminal and illegal occupation of Palestine and Iraq respectively.