Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, never said “kill Jews” in Gaza speech

We continuously read or hear on the TV about the threats Arabic or Muslim leaders (that aren't in cahoots with Halliburton or Chevron) make towards Israel.  The Zionist regime is always portrayed as the victim, the Palestinians, or Iranians, the aggressors. Anti-semitism along the lines of European anti-semitism is the cause of  Palestinian actions; they just hate Jews.  Comparing Palestinians to European anti-semites and Nazis is ludicrous. We share this from the Electronic Intifada as a perfect example of how the western media, even a paper with a liberal bent, distorts what is actually said and why it is important that translation of language is meticulously researched before publication.  In these cases its intentional but either way, it's crucial.

Workers must bear this in mind when we read or watch what the mass media tells us.  It lies about us, about a strike, it surely lies about events like the Palestinian struggle for justice. We always hear that Hamas, one of the few democratically elected governments/leaderships in the Middle East, doesn't  accept that Israel has a right to exist when the real issue is which Israel are we talking about?

(Hatem Omar / Maan Images)

UK’s Observer adds “kill Jews” to Hamas leader Khaled Meshal’s Gaza speech when he did not say it.

Submitted by Ali Abunimah on Sun, 12/09/2012 - 06:01
In its report on Hamas leader Khaled Meshal’s speech in Gaza on Saturday, The Observer, the Sunday sister paper of The Guardian, quoted Meshal saying the following words:

We don’t kill Jews because they are Jews. We kill the Zionists because they are conquerors and we will continue to kill anyone who takes our land and our holy places … We will free Jerusalem inch by inch, stone by stone.

This however is a blatant mistranslation. What Meshal actually said is:

We do not fight the Jews because they are Jews. We fight the Zionist occupiers and aggressors. And we will fight anyone who tries to occupy our lands or attacks us. We fight those who fight us, who attack us, who besiege us, who attack our holy places and our land.

Can you see the massive difference? To an untrained ear the Arabic verbs for “kill” and “fight” could sound the same because قتل – to kill – and قاتل – to fight or combat – come from the same root. But to any fluent Arabic speaker there is no ambiguity at all in what Meshal said as the clip below shows.

خطاب القائد خالد مشعل في مهرجان الانطلاقة 25 لحماس

Resistance “a means not an end”

The Observer painted Meshal’s speech as “uncompromising” and most other media called it “fiery.” I even heard someone on the BBC World Service say it was little changed from Hamas’ founding charter.
I have not seen any reports pointing out this passage in Meshal’s speech

Resistance for us is a means and not an end. I am speaking to the whole world through the media. If the world finds a means, without resistance or bloodshed, to return Palestine and Jerusalem to us, and the right of return, and to end the Zionist occupation then we welcome it. We tried you [the world] for 64 years and you have done nothing. So if we resort to resistance do not blame us. If we found another way without war we would have seized it, but the history of nations shows that there is no victory or liberation without resistance, without battles, without sacrifice.

خطاب القائد خالد مشعل في مهرجان الانطلاقة 25 لحماس

This is a theme Meshal has spoken about before, including in a speech in 2009 where he used almost identical words.
Meshal, while covering the bases, praising resistance and rebutting Mahmoud Abbas’ recent assertion that only the West Bank and Gaza are “Palestine” while the rest is “Israel,” was reaffirming Hamas’ longstanding openness to dealing with the world politically, rather than solely through armed resistance.
But if you read The Observer, you would think he said “kill Jews” where he said no such thing.

Update, 9 December

The Observer replaced the word “kill” with “fight” and added this note to its article: “This article was amended on Sunday 9 December 2012 to correct a mistranslation in a quote by Meshaal.”

US/Zionist aggression the destabilizing factor in the Middle East

Whose threatening whom?

The arrogance of the Zionists as the Apartheid state announces it will build 3000 more settler homes in the West Bank and Jerusalem as punishment for the Palestinians winning "non member state" status at the UN.

The Palestinians have lodged a formal complaint with the UN stating that the Zionists have acted  "in a rogue, hostile and arrogant manner, contravening all principles and rules of international law and reacting with contempt to the will of the international community."

This comes as no surprise as Israel makes no bones about violating international law. "A clear message must be sent to Israel that all of its illegal policies must be ceased or that it will be held accountable and will have to bear the consequences if its violations and obstruction of peace efforts," the Palestinian communication states.  Unfortunately Israel has become accustomed to not having a need to be accountable to anyone.  It is the most heavily armed state in the region as no other nation has them, with hundreds of nuclear weapons in its arsenal and enjoys the protection of US capitalism. 

As the US threatens war against Iran if it doesn't drop its nuclear program, surrounds the country with bases and has a flotilla of warships in the gulf, and now warns Syria against using chemical weapons or face the threat of military action, it welcomes with open arms the butcher Netenyahu after the Zionists orchestrate a massacre in  Gaza using white phosporous on civilians.  I wonder what the Arab and Muslim workers of the region and the world think about that? It doesn't go unnoticed except by millions of Americans, many of whom have not yet drawn the conclusion that the roots of terrorism are deep in US foreign policy.

The argument that Iran is the destabilizing factor in the Middle east is laughable were it not so tragic.  Three U.S. Nimitz class carrier groups in the "Persian" (yes "Persian") Gulf each  has more aircraft than the entire complement of the Iranian air force. The US regularly spies on the country using unmanned drones and refuses to acknowledge warnings not to do so. Why wouldn't Iran want nuclear weapons?  Look what the US did to the nation next door and they're not stupid, the folks at the Pentagon decided not to invade North Korea. And lets not forget, the US orchestrated the coup that overthrew the secular democratic government of Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 and installed the murderous dictatorship of the Shah. Blame US and British interference ion that country for the rise of the Mullahs.  An Israeli or US attack on Iran will set off a global chain of events that will be hard to quell but it can't be ruled out and certainly the Zionists are crazy enough to do so regardless.

One wonders how much longer events like Black Friday, Christmas sales and the Superbowl will keep Americans from taking a more active role in the affairs of state, made harder by the fact that workers have no political party of our own here and the heads of organized labor stay mum about foreign policy.  The mass media in the US is extremely closed and tightly censored and designed to carve up the year in to sections, baseball, football, basketball, with sales events in between.  There has been a major strike going on here for over a week as dock workers shut down two of the major ports in the country in a state with one of the top 6 economies in the world, but such events are not real newsworthy and might give people ideas. 

Despite this, the recent walkouts at fast food outlets the above mentioned strike and an earlier major action by teachers in Chicago, and the actions at the dreaded Wal Mart, have forced the mass media to take notice. The Occupy movement, while quieted is not yet dead and major cuts from the Obama administration are on the way so it's likely were in for a long hot summer in 2013.

It's hard to say exactly how things will unfold but one thing is certain; there's no solution on the basis of capitalism.

Tel Aviv protests against and for Gaza massacre

As I listened to the racists and Zionists on the other side of this demo I couldn't help thinking how it's like the many scenes I've seen growing in England of anti-semitic mobs in and before the war. The Zionists/religious fanatics sound just like Nazis. And they're Jews.

I was at the demonstration against the latest genocidal attack on the Palestinians of Gaza in San Francisco on Friday and we were two groups, the Zionists on one side of the street outside the embassy and us on the other. I said to an older retired trade Unionist next to me, a Jewish man, that a number of the Zionists didn't really look Jewish, sort of half joking. "They're probably Christian Zionists" he replied. I forgot about them for a moment. I happened to mentioned as I saw a youth with a mask covering his face that I tend to not talk to people that cover their faces. "I'm proud to be on this side" he said.

I also chatted with an older woman and asked where her accent was from; "I'm German" she replied. She was also Jewish and was born in Danzig but her family fled right before the war. She said that as a child she was a Zionist. "After Hitler, I really felt that we needed our own country or we wouldn't survive", she told me, "But I cannot support what Israel does which is why as a Jew I am here to protest." These demos to be honest can only go so far. I've been to many of them and Israel still does what it does and US capitalism still arms and endorses this apartheid state. These protests won't stop it.

It's a disgrace in a way that the leaders of organized Labor don't organize a blacklisting and refusal to handle any Israeli goods coming in or US goods going out to the country. But they can't even mobilize their own members to go on the offensive and in fact support US foreign policy. Still, with all its limitations, it was still good to be on the right side of history and to meet others that were there too.

Another Gaza massacre: Finkelstein on the last one

As the Zionist regime, backed by the warmonger Obama and the US capitalist class commits further atrocities on the people of Gaza, the world's largest open air concentration camp. We hear from the hypocrites at the UN,  the same old phrases. In response to the invasion British capitalism mimicking their US friends, calls for "restraint on both sides". "Israel has a right to defend itself" says the war monger Obama. That Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons, the only nuclear armed state in the region and one of the world's most powerful military's these massacres cannot in any way be called wars and Israeli Defense Force cannot be called a defense force.

The Palestinians on the other hand, have no planes, no anti-aircraft weaponry, no ships no army and no state. Calling for "restraint on both sides" in this situation is a sick joke. It is sicker than any young person who resorts to suicide bombing. It is sicker than any terrorist that flew planes in to buildings or blows up invaders in their country, yet we have to listen to this on the news time and time again and are expected to give it credibility.

On the eve of this new murderous assault on Gaza (and lets not forget the siege, which is also an act of extreme aggression) it is worth taking the time to listen and watch Norman Finkelstein discuss the previous assault on these people. And as Americans we might reflect that this is sanctioned by the US government and financed by the US taxpayer.