The
Persistence Of Fascism
By Ghali Hassan
16 August, 2006
Countercurrents.org
Most
people associate German Fascism with crimes against Jews and powerful
German army. What they forget are the death of millions of non-Jews,
the repression of minorities, and the premeditated wars of aggression
and occupation of sovereign nations. All of it seems reminiscent today.
Common in today’s parlance
is that Fascism ended with the end of World War II (WW II). The reality
is that Fascism did not end, but it was replaced by another variant
of Fascism; one that is much more powerful and violent. Fascism violence
and racial philosophy remain unaffected and were put into practice elsewhere
against different nations.
Today, the U.S. and its allies
control an array of world organisations, including the UN, and army
of NGOs, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). These
organisations are used as political tools to intimidate smaller and
defenceless nations, and to legitimise war of aggression and in the
process advance Western interests.
The recent shameful and racist
UN Resolution – drafted by the U.S., Israel and France –
to justify Israel’s aggression and war crimes against Lebanon
is just a case in point. In fact history shows that the UN either sided
with the aggressor or outright ignored the aggressor’s violations
of international law and UN own resolutions, including Resolution 242
calling on Israel to withdraw from occupied Arab land.
In addition, although German
Fascism was known for its war propaganda and war rhetoric, it was nothing
when it is compared with the today’s manipulative propaganda machines
of Fox News, CNN, the BBC and other Western corporate media. Today’s
Western propaganda is a formidable force minus the weapons. It spreads
disinformation and distorts facts in order to manipulate public opinion
and promote war and hatred.
If comparison is made today
between the war rhetoric of the Nazis and those leaders who are perpetuating
the current war of aggression, the commonalities are staggering. Today
Western leaders speak in ordinary language – often deliberately
mumbling – in order to manipulate and deceive the public. They
pretend to strive for “peace” and “human rights”,
and the spread of “democracy” and “liberty”–
a collection of euphemisms for imposing Western ideology and domination.
However, what they pretend to do have no resemblance to their ideology
and real goal.
In order to mask their ideology
and demonise their victims, leaders and advocates of today’s Fascism
argued with audacity that the enemies are “Jihadists”, “insurgents”
and “Islamic fascists”. Extremist such as Bin-Laden and
al-Zarqawi (‘al-Qaeda’) – wearing traditional dress
and beards –, were created and financed by the U.S. and its agents
and used as label to distort the images of Islam and Muslims. The root
causes of violence today are not “Islamo-Fascism”, but Israel-U.S.
Fascism that intended on world-domination.
Pretexts such as the non-existence
of “threat” of acquiring Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD),
and “terrorism” are instantly created to justify violence
and distort the images of people resisting violence. We know that Israel
and the U.S. Pose serious threat to world peace. Indeed, the governments
of the U.S. and Israel hold a virtual monopoly on violence and terrorism
to enforce their ideology. As Philip Cannistraro, a professor of History
at Florida State University rightly wrote; “Violence as a creative
force is an important aspect of Fascism philosophy” and political
ideology.
The so-called “War
on Terror” is just a smokescreen to instil fear and justify violence
and repression. It is fuelling anti-Muslims hatred and spreading Islamophobia
throughout the World, particularly in the West. As it was during Fascism,
fear is used to scare the public and justify new repressive “anti-terror”
laws, specifically targeting Muslims. As a result, harassment of Muslims
has increased dramatically and racism has reached an appalling scale.
In addition, the “War on Terror” and its ongoing seasonal
“terror alerts” are used to obfuscate
and distract public attention from the atrocities committed
against innocent civilians in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and Afghanistan.
Before the rise of Fascism,
Germany and Italy were liberal democracies preaching “tolerance”
and “free speech”. However, once the promotion of false
patriotism, negative nationalism and blind submission to authority were
promoted, things started to change and rapid descent into Fascism took
place. Hatred for Arabs and Muslims is quickly replacing Hitler’s
hatred for communists and Jews.
The war on Muslim nations
and the ongoing threat directed against Syria and Iran is part of an
Israeli-U.S. war. Israel, supported by U.S. Zionist ideologues (the
“Neo-cons”), has embarked on a permanent war of domination
in the Middle East. Although the U.S. shares Israel’s Zionist
ideology and provides Israel with weapons, money and political support,
Israel must be held responsible for violating international law and
perpetuating war crimes.
It is counterproductive branding
any criticism of Israel’s terror as “anti-Semitism”
and trying to shield Israel and deflect the main responsibility of Israel’s
war crimes on the U.S. If Israel is just a U.S. proxy force, as most
U.S. intellectuals and pundits allege, why are Turkey and Egypt not
playing this lucrative role? Israel can choose to renounce violence
and pursue its own peaceful coexistence.
It all started in 1947-1948,
when some 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed, thousands of Palestinians
were murdered and more than 750,000 Palestinians were forced to flee
their homes to neighbouring countries. This well-orchestrated ethnic
cleansing often referred to by Jewish Zionists and their Western supporters
as the “war for independence”. In reality, it was not a
war, but one defenceless nation was wiped off the map, and a Zionist
entity of European Jews was established on its foundation. “Israel
would not exist today had it not been for its systematic massacres of
the Palestinian population in 1948”, writes Azmi Bishara, the
Palestinian author and member of the Israeli Knesset.
In the first-half of 1948,
terrorist organizations like the “Haganah committed 24 massacres,
in some cases four or five people were executed, in others the numbers
were 70, 80, and 100 … There are cases such as the village of
Dawayima [in the Hebron region], in which a column entered the village
with all guns blazing and killed anything that moved”, said Benny
Morris, Israeli revisionist historian. “The worst cases were Saliha
(70-80 killed), Deir Yassin (100-110), Lod (250), Dawayima (hundreds)
and perhaps Abu Shusha (70). There is no unequivocal proof of a large-scale
massacre at Tantura, but war crimes were perpetrated there. At Jaffa
there was a massacre about which nothing had been known until now. The
same [happened] at Arab al Muwassi, in the north. About half of the
acts of massacre were part of Operation Hiram [in the north, in October
1948]: at Safsaf, Saliha, Jish, Eilaboun, Arab al Muwasi, Deir al Asad,
Majdal Krum, Sasa. In Operation Hiram there was a[n] unusually high
concentration of executions of people against a wall or next to a well
in an orderly fashion”, added Benny Morris (Ha’aretz,
January 09, 2004). The Palestinians were considered “Barbarians”
and they were targeted for extermination.
In 1948, Israel Prime Minister
David Ben-Gurion said: “We must use terror, assassination, intimidation,
land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the
Galilee of its Arab population”. Nothing has changed; Ben-Gurion’s
terror and ethnic cleansing have been used all over Palestine.
In 1967, Israel expelled
more than 500,000 Palestinians. The same racist ideology is currently
used to de-Arabise entire Palestine, masquerading as the “demographic
threat”, and accompanied by ongoing massacres of innocent Palestinian
civilians not because Palestinians are powerful and threatening the
lives of Jews, but because what Jews called the “demographic threat”.
In other words, to maintain Israel’s Jewish character, Palestinians
must be reduced to a small number by extermination and explosion. Since
1948, Israel has been implementing Fascism ideology in Palestine, with
great accuracy and with tacit support of major Western powers.
Now, six decades after the
end of WW II, we can see the results. Israel continues to expand, annexing
Palestinian agricultural land and water sources. What remains of Palestine
today is under Fascist occupation. The Palestinian people were ethnically
cleansed and those who remained under Israel’s military occupation
are confined into large concentration camps. Their movement is controlled
by military checkpoints, identity cards and the Apartheid wall. They
are subjected to a Nazi-like racism, their houses are continuously demolished
and their land is confiscated and they are enduring a slow genocide.
Gaza, the largest concentration
camp in history, is under permanent siege and constantly bombed by Israeli
forces. For the last six months, Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinians
are forced to endure starvation and chronic diseases as a result of
Israel’s blockade only because the people chose to elect their
own representatives. Comparing Israelis living in secure anti-bomb shelters
in Haifa after the Lebanese Resistance Movement (Hizbullah) fired few
rockets on the town, the Israeli journalist Amira Hass writes; “Take
what the northern residents have been going through for a month, multiply
it by 1,000, [and] add an economic blockade, power and water cuts, and
no wages. This is how the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been ‘living’
for the past six years”.
In June 2006, Israeli occupation
forces (IOF) invaded and occupied Gaza after they bombed and destroyed
Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, including Gaza's main power station,
leaving households, and hospitals across the camp without electricity
and water, while sanitation systems have collapsed. Since then, the
IOF have killed at least 200 Palestinians, including 56 children, leaving
over 800 injured, including 300 children. The Palestinian Red Crescent
Society reports at least 210 Palestinians were killed by the IOF in
Gaza and the West Bank between 01 July and 07 August 2006. The Israeli
human rights group B'Tselem reveals that at least 163 Palestinians killed
in July in Gaza alone.
It is also reported that
‘Israel is using a new kind of weaponry that burns the bodies,
cuts like a knife. It enters the body and rips organs apart’,
Samir Judah, an emergency room manager in An-Najar Hospital in Rafah
refugee camp told the Egyptian weekly, Al-Ahram. “One might think
they were burnt, but their colour is dark, they're inflated, and they
have a terrible smell. All this, and the hair is not burnt nor do the
bodies bleed”, said Dr. Bashir Sham, a member of the French Association
of Cardiovascular Surgeons.
On 20 May 2004, Yosef Lapid,
an Israeli cabinet minister and a holocaust survivor, said the demolition
of Palestinian homes in the
Rafah Refugee Camp reminded him of his grandmother in the
holocaust, adding that there “is no forgiveness for people who
treat an old woman this way”, referring to a grandmother who lost
her family home to Israeli bulldozers. It should be note that the most
effective tool of Israel’s terror is that the crimes of the Nazis
are often invoked to justify Israel’s crimes against Palestinians.
Today, Israel constitutes
the most militarised, extremist and racist society on the planet. Violence
against defenceless women and children has become part of the “Jewish
State” shared values. As the Israeli poet Ilan Shenfeld summed
it up: “March on Lebanon and also on Gaza with ploughs and salt.
Destroy them to the last inhabitant …”Save your people and
make bombs, and rain them on villages and towns and houses till they
collapse. Kill them, shed their blood, terrify their lives, lest they
try again to destroy us, until we hear from tops of exploding mountains,
Ridden down by your heels, sounds of supplication and lamentation. And
your pits will cover them. Whoever scorns a day of bloodshed, He should
be scorned. Save your people, and make war”. (Ynet, 30 July 2006).
And this is the Israeli “Left” attitude, those who pray
for “peace”.
Although Israel’s terror
is the most brutal and the longest in history, other nations who oppose
today’s Fascism are enduring similar violence. Iraq and Lebanon
have been defenceless targets for years, with horrendous magnitude of
destruction and civilian deaths.
Iraq has been systematically
destroyed and its people humiliated in the same way many European nations
were destroyed by Fascism. After more than a decade of genocidal economic
sanctions, Iraq was illegally invaded and occupied. Baghdad and many
other Iraqi cities – from Fallujah and Ramadi to al-Qaim and Haditha
– were indiscriminately and deliberately bombed and destroyed.
Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians have been killed and
many more have been wounded. The entire country was taken hostage and
the civilian population are subjected to daily grisly massacres, arbitrary
arrests and imprisonment, sadistic torture and rape by occupying U.S.
forces and mercenaries. Large U.S. corporations are looting Iraq’s
wealth and national resources while the living
conditions for Iraqis continue to deteriorate.
Like Iraq, Lebanon has been
systematically and indiscriminately destroyed. Over many years, Israel
routinely bombed and invaded Lebanon. Israeli Mossad agents and assassins
carried out countless acts of terrorism on Lebanon territory assassinating,
and kidnapping Lebanese and Palestinian citizens. In 1978-1982 Israeli
forces invaded Lebanon and occupied the country for two decades. At
least 20,000 Lebanese civilians have been murdered by Israeli forces.
Another 2000 Palestinian women and children refugees in Sabre and Chatila
refugee camps were massacred by the criminal Ariel Sharon and his proxy
thugs. Lebanon was completely destroyed before the Israelis were defeated
and forced to leave by the heroic Lebanese Resistance.
Today Israel is avenging
its defeat and using its war crimes in Lebanon to coerce the Lebanese
people against their popular Resistance, blackmail other nations and
use the crimes as a rehearsal for an Israeli-U.S. wider war in the region.
The Israeli-U.S. violence failed to achieve its goal as much as the
Nazis failed to coerce the Russian people during Fascism attacks on
Russia.
Since the Israeli premeditated
aggression against Lebanon and the indiscriminate and systematic destruction
of the country, more than 1200 innocent civilians have been killed in
a cowardly and Nazi-like fashion, a third of the dead were children
under the age of 12-years old. At least 5000 civilians have been wounded,
and more than a million Lebanese are homeless, displaced from their
towns and villages. It is estimated that some 100,000 Lebanese –
out of an original population of 913,000 – are still in southern
villages – no one knows their fate –, cut off from the rest
of the country and subjected to daily Israeli artillery shelling and
aerial bombing. Israel is intended to ethnically cleanse the population
from the area south of the Litani River and annexed their land, crimes
used during the Nazis’ occupation of Europe.
With the blessing of the
UN, the U.S. and its allies, Israel is not only allowed to drop tonnage
of banned cluster bombs and white phosphorous bombs – conducted
with U.S. weapons and paid for by billions of American taxpayers –
on densely populated areas killing hundreds of innocent civilians and
destroying their homes but also Israel is allowed to get away with horrendous
war crimes. Furthermore, Israel is using the already biased and anti-Muslim
corporate media to distort reality and plays victim.
As in Iraq, Lebanon entire
civilian infrastructure is deliberately destroyed; a flagrant violation
of international law and war crimes by any standard. Knowing that the
U.S. is on his side, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said openly
that; “We are destroying Lebanon and forcing the civilian population
to turn against Hizbullah”. With deafening silence to mass atrocities,
the persistence of Fascism seemed to have been accepted by most Western
citizens.
Rejected the world’s
call for an immediate cease-fire to halt the massacres of innocent Lebanese
civilians by Israeli forces, the U.S. showed its full complicity in
the violence. Just few days into the mass atrocity, U.S. Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice, said: “They’ve [Lebanese] been through
a very difficult war”. The aim was to give Israel more time to
destroy Lebanon and kill more innocent civilians. Note also the moral
bankruptcy and the “difficult war” that Israel and the U.S.
have orchestrated and perpetuated for more than three decades against
virtually a defenceless nation. Since the 1970s, Israel-U.S. policy
has been to coerce Lebanon and the civilian population to surrender
to Israeli-U.S. dictate.
It is important not to forget
that in April 2002 during the Israeli aggression on the West Bank city
of Jenin, the U.S. refused to call for an immediate cease-fire and encouraged
the massacre of innocent Palestinian civilians. Israeli forces indiscriminately
attacked the Jenin Refugee Camp, with bulldozers levelling Palestinian
homes and U.S.-supplied Apache and Cobra helicopter gunships and tanks
bombed the 15,000 besieged civilian population (For more see the Jenin
Inquiry Report). The U.S.-based Human Right Watch (HRW)
reported that Israeli occupation forces on the ground used Palestinians
as human shields to conduct their terror. The entire community was destroyed
in a Nazi-like fashion. At the time the UN produced a seriously flawed
report to shield Israel from war crimes responsibility.
Sadly, with deafening silence
of Western citizens, the persistence of Fascism continues today. The
differences today are in the desire of today’s Fascism to conduct
war of aggression against defenceless populations, and in the deliberate
destruction of the social and economic structure to sustain and to provide
the majority of the civilian population with their means of livelihood.
The systematic and random
mass bombing of civilian population in the cities of Iraq, Lebanon Palestine
and Afghanistan, indiscriminately killing and wounding innocent civilians
and destroying homes, cultural heritages, health care services and educational
system, including libraries, universities, schools and archives will
not coerce the people to surrender.
Finally, the premeditated
and illegal wars of aggression against Muslim nations are what the Nuremberg
Tribunal called ‘Supreme International Crime’. The Tribunal
tried Nazi leaders and most of them were found guilty and were hanged
for their crimes. Thus, in a “civilised” world and under
the same Nuremberg Charter, Western and Israeli leaders, and their accomplices
have committed war crimes.
From time immemorial, wars
of aggression and occupation nurture legitimate resistance. Therefore,
the only way to defeat Fascism, old and new, is persistence mass resistance
to its repression, wars of aggression, and occupation.
Ghali Hassan lives in Perth,
Western Australia