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Arab Despots Star in
Forbes Report 2003 "The World's Richest
People"
7 out of the the world's 19 most repressive regimes are
Arab
In Arab and Iranian dictators' propaganda,
victims are turned into aggressors, savages and barbarians are painted as
victims, imperialists and warmongers are declared moderates, defense is
aggression, offense is defense, democrats are denounced as imperialists,
dictators are lauded as democrats, and there are no problems on the planet that
could not be resolved through the destruction of
Israel.
Arab countries and Iran among
the wealthiest in
natural resources and the poorest in human
resources
Arab liberals - endangered species
A Real War - Fighting the worst fascists since
Hitler
Small
and Democratic Israel Alone in Gigantic Neighborhood of
Evil
Arab Rulers: Thieves, Agents, Slaughterers, and
Contemptible
Democratically governed nations are more likely to secure the
peace, deter aggression, expand open markets, promote economic development,
protect Western citizens, combat international terrorism and crime, uphold human
and worker rights, avoid humanitarian crises and refugee flows, improve the
global environment, and protect human health.
 Only Israel
scores"Free". None of the Arab states or Iran score "Free"
(Freedom House) (PDF, 187
KB)
Map of Freedom 2002 (Freedom House): Blue: Free, Red: Not Free,
Yellow: Partly Free
(PDF, 807 KB)
7 out of the
the world's 19 most repressive regimes are Arab (Freedom
House, 2003) PDF, 384 KB
Compare Freedom Score of Israel (Free) and
22 Arab regimes & Iran (18 Not Free, 7 Partly
Free), Source: Freedom House (PDF, 187 KB)
 Compare Freedom Score of Palestinian Authority (Not Free) and Israel (Free)
Source: Freedom House
Compare Human
Development Index of Israel (0.905), 22 Arab regimes
(0.662) & Iran (0.719) (PDF, 670
KB) Source: United Nations Human
Development Report 2003
Compare Human
Development Index of Israel (0.905) & Palestinian Authority (0.731)
(PDF, 670 KB) Source: United Nations Human Development
Report 2003
Compare
Corruption Index of Israel (7.3), Germany (7.3) and USA (7.7)
and
22 Arab regimes & Iran (1.7 -
5.5), Source: Transparency International (PDF, 1.8 MB)
Compare
Corruption Index of Palestinian Authority
(4.3),
Israel (7.3), Germany (7.3) and USA (7.7) Source:
Transparency International (PDF, 1.8
MB)
Yasser
Arafat ‘has £1.8bn fortune’ (William Tinning, The Herald, Nov 7, 2003):
"... [Arafat] has amassed a personal fortune of
between £602m and £1.8bn. ... Arafat's wife, Suha, 40, who lives away from the
struggles of her homeland, is given more than £60,000 a month from Palestinian
Authority funds."
 A Popular Idea: Give Oil Money to the People Rather Than the Despots
(John Tierney, New York Times, Sep 10, 2003): "The studies have shown that resource-rich countries in the Middle
East, ... are exceptionally
prone to authoritarian rule, slow economic growth and high rates of poverty,
corruption and violent conflict. Besides financing large armies to fight ruinous
wars with neighbors, as in Iraq and Iran, oil wealth sometimes leads to civil
wars over the sharing of the proceeds, as in Sudan and
Congo."
Extreme Sharia (Center for Religious Freedom/Freedom
House, Mar-Jun 2002 Newsletter): "In its most recent survey on the state of
political freedom and civil liberties around the world, Freedom House found that there is a dramatic, expanding gap in the
levels of freedom and democracy between Islamic countries and the rest of the
world. Only 11 of the world's 47 Muslim countries can be
categorized as "democracies." This means that a non-Islamic state is more than
three times more likely to be democratic as an Islamic state. There are no electoral democracies at all among the 16 Arabic
states of the Middle East and northern Africa. There is an
even more dramatic freedom gap between majority Islamic countries and the rest
of the world. In countries with a Muslim
majority, there is just one Free country, Mali, while 18 are
rated Partly Free and 28 are Not Free. Of the ten
lowest ranking countries in civil liberties, most are
Muslim. This defies the trend
in the rest of the world with 2001 being a high water mark for democracy and
freedom in general. The Center for Religious Freedom's own
survey on religious freedom found that the
religious areas with the largest current restrictions on religious freedom are
the Islamic countries. In July, the UN released its "Arab
Development Report" validating our findings and warning that Arab societies are being crippled by a lack of political freedom,
repression of women and intellectual isolation. One statistic that stands out:
In the last 1,000 years the whole Arab world translated as many books as Spain
does in one year. Another is the fact that half of Arab women are
illiterate." The
2001-2002 Freedom House Survey of Freedom. The Democracy Gap. (PDF, 187 KB)
Saudi
religious and morality police launch website (MEMRI, May 13, 2003) :
"... the arrest of an Asian man belonging to the
Sufi sect of Islam who "engaged in witchcraft," a study on the role of the
Authority in the struggle against "ideological invasion, ... On the photo, under
the heading "The Jewish Doll," is a story titled "The Strange Request." The
story reads: "One girl said to her mother: 'Mother, I want jeans and a shirt
open at the top, like Barbie's!!' The dolls of the Jewish Barbie in her naked
garb [sic], their disgraceful appearance, and their various accessories are a
symbol of the dissolution of values in the West. We must fully comprehend the
danger in them."
 Trading With a Terrorist (Review & Outlook, Wall
Street Journal, Aug 12, 2003): "It's been 15 years since Libyan terrorists
downed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie,
Scotland, ending 270 lives; four years since Libya finally
turned over two suspects in the bombing; and two years since a Scottish court in
the Netherlands convicted one of them."
Text of a letter sent to the U.N. Security Council
Friday from Libyan U.N. envoy Ahmed Own, accepting responsibility for the 1988
bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland (CNN, Aug 15,
2003).
Free Arabia. The West can no longer afford to ignore
repression in the Mideast. (Claudia Rosett, Wall Street Journal, Aug 14,
2002)
 Practice of mutilating execution method with hand grenades in Saddam
Hussein's Iraq
These pictures are not suitable for children. They are
extremely disturbing!!!
Thank You . An Iraqi poet celebrates the dictator's fall.(Awad Nasir,
Wall Street Journal, May 8, 2003): "It is not
only the people of Iraq who are grateful for the end of a nightmare. A majority
of Arabs and Muslims are also grateful. The chorus of lamentation for Saddam
consists of a few isolated figures espousing the bankrupt ideologies of
pan-Arabism and Islamism. A Moroccan Islamist tells us that the American
presence in Iraq is "a punishment from Allah" for Muslims because of their
"weakening faith." But if the toppling of a tyrant is punishment, then I pray
that Allah will bring similar punishments on other Arab nations that endure
despotic rule."
 Shaking Up the Neighbors (Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, Aug
6, 2003): "Shortly after
the 25-member Governing Council was appointed in Iraq, the head of the Arab
League, Amr Moussa, questioned the U.S.-appointed Council's legitimacy. "If this
Council was elected," complained Mr. Moussa, "it would have gained much power
and credibility." I love that quote. I love it,
first of all, for its bold, gutsy, shameless, world-class hypocrisy. Mr. Moussa
presides over an Arab League in which not one of the 22 member states has a
leader elected in a free and fair election."
Taking Care of League Business (Walid
Phares, NRO, March 28, 2003:
"1) Speaking of withdrawal from Iraq,
shouldn't the Arab League be asking Syria — a
League member — to withdraw from Lebanon? That small country
was invaded in 1990 by an Arab army following an Arab League decision — which,
let us remind Mr. Mahmassani, was never authorized by the United Nations. Since
1976, the Arab League has sponsored armed interventions in Lebanon quite
independently of the U.N. Worse, it legitimized the onslaught of the Syrian
forces in Lebanon — complete with 15 years of shelling, massacres, kidnappings,
and terrorism, and the forceful imposition of a new regime in October 1990.
2) The
League's representative warned against the "harm that could be caused to the
peoples of the region." But the League shows such thoughtfulness only to certain
populations. Kurds are not on its list, nor are the Berbers or the Copts.
The Kurds are massacred by the Iraqi regime, the
Algerian government suppresses the Berbers, and the Copts are persecuted by both
their own Egyptian government and by fundamentalist
organizations. The list goes on. Despite a range of atrocities stretching from
the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, the League has remained heavily silent.
3) Last but
not least, the Arab League charges that its people do not want change,
especially if it comes from the outside world, and particularly if it is to be
at the hands of the United States. It claims that Arab matters are settled among
and by Arabs. But if that's the case, why don't
we call for free elections in Damascus, Riyadh, and Tripoli, and learn more
about the real will of the people of the region? Let's grant
the masses there what the League wants to grant the Palestinians — nothing more,
nothing less. Why should the United States be urged to intervene in one Arab
matter (the Palestinian one) and not in another one (Iraq)? Are the Kurds and
Shiites second-class communities?"
Arab
League Revives Boycott Against Israel (Shearman & Sterling LLP, Jan 2,
2004): "On March 28, 2001, at a two-day summit in Amman, Jordan, Arab heads
of state adopted a resolution calling for the reactivation of the Arab boycott
against Israel. In response, U.S. antiboycott laws are expected to be more
vigorously enforced in order to counteract any enhancement of the Arab boycott
that may result from this resolution. The resolution directs the Arab League's
Central Boycott Office (CBO) in Damascus, Syria, to hold regular boycott
conferences with the aim of preventing dealings with Israel."
 Arab democratic reform. Arab reform, or Arab performance?
(Economist, Jul 17, 2003): "Across the region, including Iraq, the Islamist
trend remains the one most likely to succeed in open elections. ... Arab regimes
are simply too addicted to power. They can make the right gestures, but even a
small relinquishment of authority produces ugly withdrawal symptoms."
Tunisian Intellectual Al-Afif Al-Akhdar On the Arab Identity Crisis and
Education in the Arab World (Elaph.com/MEMRI Sep 21, 2003): "Why is it that our countries are among the wealthiest
in natural resources... and the poorest in human
resources? Why does the world's
human knowledge double every three years... while with us, what multiplies
several times over is illiteracy, ideological fear, and mental paralysis? Why do
expressions of tolerance, moderation, rationalism, compromise, and negotiation
horrify us, but [when we hear] fervent cries for vengeance, we all dance the war
dance? Why have the people of the world managed to mourn their pasts and move
on, while we have established, hard and fast, our gloomy bereavement over a past
that does not pass? Why do other people love life, while we love death and
violence, slaughter and suicide, and [even] call it heroism and
martyrdom...?"
A thwarted civilization. Arabs Have Nobody to Blame But
Themselves (The Wall Street Journal, Arab-American professor Fouad Ajami, Oct
16, 2001)
"Fighting Corruption [in the Arab World] is Like Fighting
Catholicism in the Vatican." (Excerpts from an article by Dr. Abd Al-Wahhab
Al-Effendi, a Sudanese author and researcher who resides in London, appeared in
the London-based Arabic-language daily Al-Hayat, MEMRI, Aug 14,
2002).
On the Arab Obsession with Vengeance (Excerpts from two articles
by Tunisian intellectual Al-'Afif Al-Akhdar, who resides in Paris, appeared on
the website Elaph, MEMRI no. 499, May 4, 2003)
Why do Arabs Hate
the West, Especially the U.S.? (MEMRI, Aug 12, 2003): Zuheir Abdallah,
columnist for the London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat, blames Arab fascism and
Islamism for failing to achieve any accomplishments for the Arab world since
1948, leading to its backwardness today. "Most
Arabs hate the West, especially the U.S., for many reasons; some date back to
the Crusades and the Andalusia period, and more recently,
because of Palestine and Iraq. I don't intend to delve into this historical
turmoil, but for the sake of history, the Arabs
should remember that they invaded and occupied important parts of Europe
hundreds of years before the Crusades wars. ...
Let us stop for a minute and ask ourselves, Arabs
and most Muslims, what did we offer for ourselves and the rest of the world,
since the beginning of the industrial revolution to this day, from human
sciences and inventions or any other added value to civilization? Unfortunately,
the answer is: almost nothing!!"
President Bush Presses on Peace and Liberty in the
Middle East, May 9, 2003: "After September the 11th, 2001, your generation
and our whole country knows better. In an age of
global terror and weapons of mass destruction what happens in the Middle East
greatly matters to America. The bitterness of that region
can bring violence and suffering to our own cities. The advance of freedom and peace in the Middle East would drain
this bitterness and increase our own security ... Free
governments do not build weapons of mass destruction for the purpose of mass
terror. Over time, the expansion of liberty throughout the world is the best
guarantee of security throughout the world. Freedom is the way to peace ... The Middle East presents many
obstacles to the advance of freedom. And I understand that this transformation
will be difficult. Recently, a group of 30 Arab scholars issued a report
describing a freedom deficit in Arab countries, citing in particular a lack of
human rights and poor education. They also identified the social oppression of
women as a major barrier to progress. And they are correct. No society can
succeed and prosper while denying basic rights and opportunities to the women of
their country."
99.5% of U.S.
Congress Commends Israeli Democracy (Feb 11, 2003) ( PDF, 31 KB) The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly
to “commend the people of Israel for reaffirming their dedication to democratic
ideals”. The resolution, which passed
411-2, also reaffirms the “close bonds of friendship” that
have “bound the people of the United States and the people of Israel together
through turbulent times for more than half a century,” and urges the Palestinian
leadership to act on President Bush’s June 24, 2002, call to elect new leaders,
dismantle the terrorist infrastructure, end incitement and embrace
democracy.99.5%
of U.S. Congress Commends Israeli Democracy (Feb 11, 2002)
Why Arabs love Israel (Joseph Farah, WND, Apr 9,
2003): "Arabs in Israel vote. They elect
leaders to the Knesset [Israeli parliament]. They have their own political
parties. They have their own newspapers. They have full rights to citizenship.
They are free to speak their minds. As an Arab-American journalist who has spent
a good deal of time covering the region, I can tell you there is more freedom
for Arabs in Israel than in any Arab state."
If you're a headstrong Arab or Iranian, bent on protest,
Israel is in every respect a paradise compared with any other state in the
Middle East:
In Lebanon, don’t try speaking out
against the Syrian occupation. You won’t live long.
In Saudi Arabia, don’t try converting from
Islam. You won't live long.
In Iraq, don’t try saying the regime has got
WMD. You won’t live long.
In Somalia, don’t try refusing sexual mutilation of your
sister. She and you won't live long.
In Tunisia, don’t try saying the government is
corrupt. You won't live long.
In Egypt, don’t try being a homosexual. You
won't live long.
In Sudan, don’t try being a
separatist. You won’t live long.
In Iran, don’t try having an affair.
You won’t live long.
In Algeria, don’t
try fomenting revolutionary jihadism. You won't live long.
In Libya, don’t try asking about her role in
international terrorism. You won’t live
long.
In Mauritania, don’t try helping a slave
run away. He and you won’t live long.
In Syria, don’t try throwing stones at police.
You won't live long.
In Oman, don’t try
demonstrating for women rights. You won’t live long.
In Morocco, don’t try saying Arab Saharawis
have been displaced. You won’t live long.
In Yemen, don’t try
apostasy. You won’t live long.
In the Palestinian Authority, don’t try supporting democratic
Israel. You won’t live long.
The End of 'Arafat'. Even if he lives, the idea of him
must die. (Wall Street Journal, Sep 17, 2003): "If you look at the Nobel Prizes' own biography of Yasser Arafat, you find this
remarkable sentence toward the end: 'Like other Arab regimes in the area,
however, Arafat's governing style tended to be more dictatorial than
democratic.' That is to say, Arafat by his own choice of
governance--dictatorship over democracy--bears individual responsibility for the
legacy he leaves. That legacy includes: the
contemporary crime of hijacking and blowing up civilian-filled airliners; the
attempted destabilization of Jordan and Israel and the successful destruction of
Lebanon as a formerly sovereign nation; and decades of violated international
agreements, culminating in the collapse of Oslo. ... has made possible any
crime, culminating in the anti-moral act known as suicide
bombers."
Assad's Regime More Criminal than Saddam's Regime. Ahmad Al-Jarallah,
editor of the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyasa, wrote a series of articles which were
critical of the Syrian regime (MEMRI, Apr 22, 2003): "Syria, and with it the
same supporters and mercenaries, say that it is a Zionist game, and that Iraq
was conquered by the American-Israeli forces. It says that the U.S. is carrying
out a Sharonist program in this country, the goal of which is to impose Pax
Israeliana on the region, and every one of the statements are part of the game
of cat and mouse and are aimed at gaining time. What is demanded from Syria is
self-examination that will show that the Damascus
regime suffers greatly from sadistic behavior, and that it is identical to
Saddam, in the parameters of dictatorship, of single-party rule, and in its
refraining from development, change, and adopting the principles of freedom and
democracy."
President Bush's call of June 24, 2002 to the
Palestinians, to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure, end incitement to
violence in official media, elect new leaders not compromised by terror, and
embrace democracy.
Egypt's
Emergency without End. Rushed Renewal of Repressive Legislation (Human Rights
Watch, Feb 25, 2003)
Iraq & Iran are 2 out of 3 states in axis of
evil as
classified by U.S. President Bush (State
of the Union Address, Jan 29, 2002): "States like these [North Korea,
Iran, Iraq], and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the
world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and
growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists,
giving them the means to match their hatred."
Iran and Arab Iraq, Libya, Sudan,
Syria are 5 out of the world's 7
State Sponsors of Terrorism as classified by the U.S. Department
of State
15 out of the world's 33
Foreign Terrorist Organizations as designated by the U.S. State Department
are Arab or
Iranian or have an Arab or Iranian agenda:
Abu Nidal organization (ANO)
Al-Aqsa Martyrs
Brigade [belonging to Arafat's
Fatah]
Armed Islamic Group (GIA)
' Asbat al-Ansar
Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya (Islamic Group, IG)
HAMAS (Islamic Resistance Movement)
Hizballah (Party of God)
Al-Jihad (Egyptian Islamic Jihad)
Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK or
MKO)
Palestinian
Islamic Jihad (PIJ)
Palestine Liberation Front (PLF)
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)
PFLP-General Command (PFLP-GC)
Al-Qaida
Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC)
10 out of the world's 33 Foreign Terrorist
Organizations as designated by the U.S. Department of State are Palestinian or
have a Palestinian agenda:
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade [belonging
to Arafat's Fatah]
Abu Nidal Organization (ANO)
HAMAS (Islamic Resistance Movement)
Palestinian
Islamic Jihad (PIJ)
Palestine Liberation Front (PLF)
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)
PFLP-General Command (PFLP-GC)
Asbat al-Ansar [Palestinians in Lebanon]
Hizballah (Party of God) [Lebanese with Palestinian
agenda]
Al-Qaida
[Muslim with Palestinian agenda]
Israel
Comparison Maps (IRIS): Compare the map of Israel with maps of other areas
drawn to the same scale, to put Israel's size into perspective. In these maps,
Israel is portrayed including all land currently under its authority.
Still, Israel is small compared with most
countries around the world, most states in the U.S. and most other countries in
its region.
SOS Slaves
website (Sep 15, 2003): "Founded in 1995, SOS Slaves is a human rights
organization dedicated to eradicating chattel slavery in Mauritania. ...
the Mauritanian government banned SOS Slaves and
arrested several of its leaders. ... Slavery has been a part
of Mauritanian society for centuries. Over 800 years ago, Arab and Berber tribes
descended from the Mediterranean peninsula and launched slave raids against the
indigenous African population, abducting women and children as slaves. Those
enslaved were converted to Islam and raised to believe that their religious duty
was to serve their masters faithfully. The
relationship of master (bidanes) and slave (haratines) continues to this day,
with thousands of haratines families owned as inheritable property by bidanes
and denied basic human rights by Mauritania's Islamic
courts."
UN Arab
Human Development Report 2002. Read/download the complete 178 pages report in
one big file (5,209 KB) which the UN has commissioned from a group of
distinguished Arab intellectuals: The
GDP of all 280 million Arabs combined is less than what the 40 million
inhabitants of Spain produce. The 280
million-people-Arab-world translates about 300
books annually - this is 20% the number that the 10 million-people-Greece alone
translates!!! Freedom scores of ALL Arab states: Better
don't ask ... Interestingly, while the category "Occupied Palestinian Territory"
is included in practically ALL comparison tables of the report, most of the
PALESTINIAN DATA IS MISSING. Why? One must
conclude that the comparison of the Palestinian with the other Arabs' data would
rather indicate that the Palestinians live in a paradise, compared with most
other Arabs, and that the allegedly poor and desperate Israel-repressed Arabs in
the "Occupied Palestinian Territory" are simply the richest, most educated,
healthiest and freest Arabs in the neighbourhood. However,
the report reveals SOME of the Palestinian data: See for yourself that the
allegedly poor and desperate Israel-repressed Arabs in the "Occupied Palestinian
Territory" have the highest annual growth rate (4.78% p.a.) of ALL Arab states,
and twice as high as the average of ALL neighbouring states (Jordan: 2.90,
Egypt: 1.82, Lebanon: 1.97, Syria 2.59). One must conclude that Israeli health
care is good for Arabs' growth ... Number of frequently cited scientific papers
per million people: Egypt: 0.02, Israel: 169 - this is 8,500 -
eightthousandfivehundred - times more than in Egypt, and 17,000 times more than
Algeria. The rest is history ... So why does
Palestinian society appear to be suicidal? That's a long story, but remember
most advanced and sophisticated Germany and Japan trying very hard to destroy
their neighbourhood and disgracing themselves. The USA/GB liberated these people
from their own dictators and their "occupation" resulted in democratic
education, free press, free market etc. Within a decade, the German and Japanese
people became most respected partners and even allies of their former
enemies.
Complete 178
pages UN Arab Human Development Report
2002 (PDF, 4511 KB)
Tables
of UN Arab Human Development Report 2002 (PDF,
128KB)
UN Arab Human Development Report 2003
Arab development. Self-doomed to failure (The Economist, Jul 4,
2002): "WHAT went wrong with the Arab world? Why is it so stuck behind the
times? It is not an obviously unlucky region. Fatly endowed with oil, and with
its people sharing a rich cultural, religious and linguistic heritage, it is
faced neither with endemic poverty nor with ethnic conflict. It shook off its
colonial or neo-colonial legacies long ago, and the countries that
had
revolutions should have had time to recover from them. But, with barely
an exception, its autocratic rulers, whether presidents or kings, give up their
authority only when they die; its elections are a sick joke; half its people are
treated as lesser legal and economic beings, and more than half its young,
burdened by joblessness and stifled by conservative religious tradition, are
said to want to get out of the place as soon as they can. Across dinner tables
from Morocco to the Gulf, but above all in Egypt, the Arab world's natural
leader, Arab intellectuals endlessly ask one another how and why things came to
turn out in this unnecessarily bad way. A team of such scholars (it is
indicative of the barriers to freely expressed thought that there are almost no
worthwhile think-tanks in the Arab world) have now
spent a year putting their
experience to diagnostic use in the “Arab Human
Development Report 2002”, published this week by the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP)."
Human Development in the Arab World: A Study by the United Nations
(Dr. Raphaeli)
Hatred of Israel is a crutch Arab states have to give up (Ruth
Wisse, Wall Street Journal, Jun 16, 2003): "At any point during the past 55 years, Arab governments could have
helped the Palestinian Arabs settle down to a decent life. They could have
created the infrastructure of an autonomous Palestine on the West Bank of the
Jordan and the Gaza territory that Egypt controlled until 1967, or encouraged
the resettlement of Palestinians in Jordan, which constitutes the lion's share
of the original mandate of Palestine. Rather than fund the Palestine Liberation
Organization to foment terror against Israel they could have endowed Palestinian
schools of architecture, engineering, medicine and law. What Israel did for its
refugees from Arab lands, Arabs could have done much more sumptuously for the
Palestinians displaced by the same conflict. Instead, Arab rulers cultivated
generations of refugees in order to justify their ongoing campaign against the
'usurper' ... In almost identical ways [to the Nazis],
the autocrats who govern Arab societies have used
the "Zionist entity" to deflect attention from the worst aspects of their
rule. The unwanted presence of the Jews became the rallying
point for internal dissatisfaction with the mounting problems of Arab regimes.
The drumbeat against Israel invited the world to debate the iniquities of the
Jews rather than question the legitimacy of the attacks against them. This
comparison is not intended to equate the Germans with the Arabs, except in the
ways that both exploited anti-Semitism to achieve broader political goals. Both
used the alleged threat of "the Jews" to excuse their own failures.
Anti-Semitism in both situations linked otherwise
warring groups of the Left and Right. The problem with
anti-Semitism in its older and newer varieties is that it seems to serve its
patrons so well. Without question, Arab rulers
successfully deflected attention from their offenses by their decades of war and
propaganda against Israel. Even the liberal Western media that might have been
expected to support a besieged fellow democracy have long since focused on
alleged Israeli abuses instead of on the abuses of their Arab
accusers."
The National Security Strategy of the United States of America
(White House, Sep 2002)
US National Strategy to Combat
Weapons of Mass Destruction (White House, Dec 2002)
(PDF, 424
KB)
The U.S.-Middle East
Partnership Initiative (Secretary Colin L. Powell, Dec 12, 2002): Building Hope
for the Years Ahead
Fact Sheet Outlines U.S.-Middle East Partnership
Initiative. Supports educational, economic, political reform in Arab World (Dec
12, 2002)
SOURCES OF
REVENUE FOR SADDAM & SONS. A Primer on the Financial Underpinnings of the
Regime in Baghdad (The Coalition for International Justice, Sep 2002)
(PDF, 448 KB):
"... Saddam, aided variously by his two sons and close
relations before them, has managed to earn more than $2 billion a year in hard
currency by illegally exploiting the UN system and running extensive smuggling
operations outside it."Apparatus of Lies. Saddam’s Disinformation and Propaganda
1990-2003 (White House)
League of Arab States
The Think Tank of the Arab League: The Zayed Centre for
Coordination and Follow-Up (ZCCF), MEMRI Special Report No.16,
16.5.2003
INTERNAL SUSTAINABILITY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN
THE ARAB STATES (Ali Abdel Gadir Ali, Arab Planning Institute, Kuwait, Aug
2001) (PDF, 123 KB)
One Purely Evil Cartel. Iraq's liberation is the
perfect opportunity to smash OPEC (Claudia Rosett, Wall Street Journal, Jul 30,
2003): "Though there are many polite ways in
which OPEC is usually described, it would be accurate to sum up this outfit's
activities as follows: a gang of price-fixing, oil-rich thug regimes that meet
to reinforce assorted terrorist-sponsoring tyrants and gouge
consumers. ... The Saudis are, of course, entitled to offer
oil at any price they want, including the OPEC target price of $22 to $28 a
barrel for oil that costs them $1 to $2 a barrel to produce. But the Saudi-led
collusion that goes into keeping world oil prices high enough to command prices
that OPEC deems "fair and reasonable" is the kind of stuff that would get
private capitalists in the U.S. fried on prime-time TV and thrown in prison. ...
Oil in any nation is a perilous treasure, but
especially so when it is entirely owned or controlled by the state. In
government hands, in large quantities, oil wealth helps rulers consolidate
control to a degree that in Saudi Arabia today funds the totalitarian
state--with its export of its Wahhabi terrorist creed. In Iraq, the state oil
monopoly sustained Saddam Hussein. Huge oil revenues relieve
the rulers of the need to negotiate with their subjects any sort of mutually
acceptable tax system. Instead, oil tyrants are in a position to govern chiefly
by bribe and threat. The result is stunted development, both political and
economic. Saudi Arabia's per capita income, despite the country's vast oil
wealth, has been shrinking for years. OPEC's overall rate of economic growth
this year is estimated by its own analysts at 1.4%, or less than half the world
average of 2.9%."
Saudi Arabia's Overrated Oil Weapon (Max Singer, Weekly Standard,
Aug 18, 2003): "OVERESTIMATES OF ARAB OIL POWER are an important and harmful
influence on policy toward the Middle East. The following myths, or outdated
facts, support the world's misjudgment of the power of the Persian Gulf oil
producers--especially Saudi Arabia, but also Iran, Iraq, and the Gulf
states."
Iran clarifies the Middle East (Dennis Prager, WND, Dec 30, 2003):
"If you want to understand the Middle East
conflict, Iran has just provided all you need to know. A massive earthquake
kills between 20,000 and 40,000 Iranians, and the government of Iran announces
that help is welcome from every country in the world ... except
Israel. This little-reported news item is of great
significance. It begs commentary. Israel not only has the world's most
experienced crews in quickly finding survivors in bombed out buildings, it is
also a mere two-hour flight from Iran. In other words, no country in the world would come close to Israel in its ability
to save Iranian lives quickly. But none of this means
anything to the rulers of Iran. The Islamic government of Iran has announced to
the world that it is better for fellow countrymen
and fellow Muslims – men, women and children – to die buried under rubble than
to be saved by a Jew from Israel."
Human Rights and Human Wrongs. Sharia can’t be an
exception to international human-rights norms. (David Littman, NRO, Jan 19,
2003): "The principal aim of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human
Rights (UDHR) was to create a framework for a universal code based on mutual
consent."
AL QAEDA'S AGENDA FOR IRAQ (Paris based Iranian
journalist Amir Taheri, New York Post, Sep 3, 2003): "'It is not the
American war machine that should be of the utmost concern to Muslims. What
threatens the future of Islam, in fact its very survival, is American
democracy." This is the message of a new book, just published by al Qaeda in
several Arab countries. The author of "The Future of Iraq and The Arabian
Peninsula After The Fall of Baghdad" is Yussuf al-Ayyeri, one of Osama bin
Laden's closest associates since the early '90s."
Al-Qaddafi: 'Libya Should Quit the Arab League... Women Must be
Trained to Booby-Trap Cars, Houses, Luggage, and Children's Toys' (Al-Shams
(Libya), October 5, 2003 - MEMRI, Oct 10, 2003): "The Palestinians and the
Lebanese – we sacrificed our blood for them, we gave them our money, we gave
them everything. We held training for them and ultimately it turned out that we
were terrorists, while they embrace the Americans, the Israelis, and the
Westerners, Libya is [accused of] terrorism because it trained the Palestinians.
We fulfilled our obligation, we gave our money, we gave them weapons, we exposed
ourselves to dangers, [and] we are on the blacklist to this day… The Arabs are
completely useless. They are unwilling to do anything for the sake of unity. ...
There are nations to which I did an injustice and
I apologize for this. I brought Mauritania, Djibouti, Somalia, and the Comoro
Islands into the Arab League, and I tried to bring in Eritrea. But now I cannot
speak with Eritrea. Look what an injustice I did them. I brought them into a
failed nation, a failed regime, and failed people…. The Arabs are completely
useless. We must not waste time. The Arabs are through. ... I ask of the Libyan
people to agree to quit the Arab League, without wasting time. These people
[i.e. the Arabs] are useless. Their situation is terrible. We must be rid of
them, of their curses and of their problems. Let them go in
peace. They won't talk to us and we won't talk to them. Even the Arab League is
nothing. It has been four months since its officials received their salaries,
because the Arab countries refrained from paying their membership
dues…We must train the women how to booby-trap
the car and blow it up among the enemy, how to blow up the house so it falls on
the enemy soldiers. Traps must be prepared. You have seen how [the enemy]
check[s] luggage. These suitcases should be rigged so that when they open them
they blow up. The women must be taught how to booby-trap their clothes closets,
booby-trap their purses, booby-trap their shoes, booby-trap the children's toys,
so they blow up on the enemy soldiers."
52 to 48 (Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, Sep 3,
2003): "The Arab look-alike, called ``Superstar,'' was aired by Future
Television of Lebanon. Over 21 weeks, viewers got to vote by fax, Internet or
cellphone for their favorite singers. ... But what was even more striking, Mr.
Khouri said, was the Jordanian singer's victory margin. She won by only 52 to 48
percent in a region where presidents always win by ``99 percent. 'I do not
recall in my happy adult life a national vote that resulted in a 52 to 48
percent victory,' Mr. Khouri added. ``Most of the `referenda' or `elections'
that take place in our region usually result in fantastic pre-fixed victories.
... So a 52 to 48 percent outcome - even for just a song contest - is a breath
of fresh air.'' He said he thanked the television network ``for allowing
ordinary Arabs to show that they are not always willing participants in the
political freak shows that are the `official elections' for president and other
forms of Great Leader.''
Genocides, Crimes and Massacres Committed by the PLO and the Syrians
Against the Lebanese, 1975-2002 (Guardians of the Cedars
FREEDOM FIGHTERS. Reviving Mideastern Democracy. We Arabs need the West's
help to usher in a new Liberal Age (Egypt-based Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Wall Street
Journal, Nov 26, 2003): "Democracy is the way forward. It is the
only sure way to keep the Middle East from going to the brink of war every few
years. In an article recently published in the Washington
Post, I counted the number of times that the United States or other Western
powers have had to form military coalitions or use large-scale armed force in
the region to avert or resolve a problem. From 1958, when President Eisenhower
sent U.S. Marines to Lebanon, up through the Iraq war of 2003, the rate of
military interventions has averaged one every seven years. God knows when the
next one will be, but without democracy they are sure to continue, and that is
no light matter. It is time for us as Arabs to
put our own houses in order. There are a thousand and one difficulties facing us
as we work to institute democracy in the Arab world and the larger Middle East.
And yet what choice do we have except to try once, twice or
as often as we must? Government by consent,
respect for human rights, and support for the rule of law are the only things
that can finally and securely protect our countries, our region and the world
against the threats of terrorism and of crises that compel outsiders to come and
use military force on our shores. How do I rate the
prospects for democracy in the Middle East? I think that they are surprisingly
good. I am well aware of those who marshal evidence to show that instituting
democracies and open societies in the region, or perhaps even in the larger
Muslim world, is difficult or impossible. The difficulties are well known and
undeniable. But they can all be overcome. In previous decades, authoritative
voices said that Germany, Japan, Slavic countries and even Catholic societies
would never, could never, be democratic. I am not speaking of popular prejudices
here, but of high-level scholarship and expert consensus. Batteries of learned
naysayers honestly believed that there was something about German, Japanese or
Slavic culture, or about Catholicism, that was fundamentally and unchangeably
hostile to democracy and democratic values."
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