The Arab Boat

Written on May 15th, 2015 in politics Comments Off

… it’s an Arab-Palestinian Nakba, and We Are All Refugees – Published on Dissident Voice, by Ramzy Baroud, May 13, 2015.

In a western capital far away from Gaza and Cairo, I recently shared a pot of tea with an Egyptian refugee.

The term is familiar to me, but never have I encountered an Egyptian who refers to himself as such. He stated it as a matter of fact by saying: as an Egyptian refugee … and carried on to talk about the political turmoil in his country.  

It made me shudder as I tried to conjure up a possible estimation of Arabs who have been made refugees in recent years. But where does one start the estimation if we are to set aside the Palestinian Nakba in 1948? Or forget the successive waves of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians that followed, and disregard the various exoduses of Lebanese civilians as a result of Israeli invasions and civil war?

Iraq can be the start – the country that served as a foundation of everything Arab. Their culture, history and civilization, which extends to the very beginning of human civilization, ushered in the new Arab exodus.

The American promise to bomb it “back to the stone age” was worse than expected. Millions of Iraqis became refugees after the US-led war, a situation that was exasperated in the mid-2000s with the invasion-provoked civil war … //

… Yes, 10,000 Arabs, are made refugees every day according to IDMC. Many of them are internally displaced people (IDPs), others are refugees in other countries, and thousands take their chances by sailing in small boats across the Mediterranean. Thousands die trying.

“I am a Syrian refugee from the Palestinian al-Yarmouk camp in Damascus,” wrote Ali Sandeed in the British Guardian newspaper. “When I was small, my grandmother used to tell us how she felt when she was forced to flee to Syria from her home in Palestine in 1948, and how she hoped that her children and grandchildren would never have to experience what it feels like to be a refugee. But we did. I was born a Palestinian refugee, and almost three years ago I became a refugee once more, when my family and I had to flee the Syrian war to Lebanon.”

“’I thought the boat was my only chance,” was the title of the article where Sandeed described his journey to Europe via boat.

Many of Yarmouk’s refugees are refugees or descendants of Palestinian refugees who once lived in northern Palestine – in Haifa, Akka and Saffad. Reading his testimony immediately summoned the chaotic scenes as the refugees fled the Zionist invasion of Haifa in 1948 … //

… (full text).

Links:

Elizabeth Warren’s Trade Deal Fears Confirmed, Canada Uses NAFTA to Challenge Volcker Rule, on naked capitalism, by Yves Smith, May 14, 2015: In her attacks on Obama’s pending trade deals, Elizabeth Warren has argued that could undermine US financial regulations like Dodd Frank. The Administration has taken to trying to dismiss Warren as not knowing what she was talking about. More skillful defenders of the traitorous trade deals took the tact of saying that Warren could in theory be right, but the odds of her fears playing out were so remote as to not be worth worrying about …;

Betrayal and Betrayers, Merkel’s Risky Silence in the NSA Scandal, on Spiegel Online International, by Klaus Brinkbäumer, May 14, 2015: While Chancellor Angela Merkel remains tight-lipped about the German intelligence scandal, her second-in-command is casting her in an increasingly unflattering light by opening up;

Inside the CIA’s Use of Terror During the Vietnam War, on Dissident Voice, by Douglas Valentine, May 13, 2015;

Chelsea Manning rewrites the Espionage Act, on Russia Today RT, May 13, 2015: Former intelligence analyst Manning has drafted a 31-page bill to re-establish protections for freedom of speech and the press that have been challenged by the Justice Department in recent court decisions involving whistleblowers and journalists. Manning’s bill, The National Integrity and Freedom of Speech Protection Act (NIFSPA / 31 pages) of 2015, sent the US Senate and the US House of Representatives, also included a section-by-section analysis of the proposal. The bill would amend sections of the Freedom of Information Act, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the Espionage Act, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Federal Disclosure Rules for Journalists …;

Jeb Bush, the Mexican Drug Cartel and Free Trade, the Bush Family and Organized Crime, on Global Resear4ch.ca, by Prof Michel Chossudovsky, May 12, 2015;

TTIP and TiSA – a secretly negotiated agreement with secret content, on Current Concerns, by Dr iur Marianne Wüthrich, May 11, 2015: Next, what will happen to Switzerland – if we don’t do anything about it – is our slipping into the so-called Free Trade Agreements. They will, in no way, be concluded for the benefit of the citizens, neither for the benefit of any other involved countries’ citizens. Everything is planned and controlled by the transatlantic Big Brother …;

The shifting battleground, on RWER Blog, by Asad Zaman, May 11, 2015: The bull charges the red flag being waved by the matador, and is killed because he makes a mistake in recognising the enemy. Samuel Huntington argued that the era of the clash of nations is over. However, he created a red flag when he painted the civilisation of Islam as the new enemy. Trillions of dollars have been spent in fighting this enemy, created to distract attention from the real enemy. The financial deregulation initiated in the Reagan-Thatcher era in the 1980s was supposed to create prosperity. In fact, it has resulted in a sky-rocketing rise in inequality …;

Book: The Economy of the Hamster, on RWER Blog, by Mauro Gallegati, May 11, 2015;

An Eastern German commune and its citizens fight for their rights, on Current Concerns, Interview with Karin Berndt, Mayor of the town Seifhennersdorf/Saxony, May 11, 2015: Seifhennersdorf teaches a lesson in German democracy;

For Teachers (thank you, Leah Dupre):

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