The Stockholm air was too cold, even for the most animated speaker to excite a crowd. But I had little choice: thousands of anti-war protesters had descended on the capital’s main square to show their support of the Iraqi people on the four-year anniversary of the US invasion, and to demand an immediate American withdrawal.
As I took to the stage and began my speech, I was struck by the fact that there was not one Palestinian or Lebanese flag. Even the Venezuelan flag, which is often an invited sign of defiance and steadfastness, was absent. If that spectacle was a sign of strategic calculation: to distance the war in Iraq from all others, it was a grave mistake. I spoke exactly of that: it’s the same war, the same occupation; Israel and its neoconservative benefactors are recurring faces in the Middle East’s ongoing chaos. That is a fact that anti-war movements everywhere must keep at the forefront if they want their message to have validity or relevance.
The Israeli connection to the political "realignments" in the region goes back as early as 1992. The draft Defense Planning Guidance (DPG), which was circulated around the Pentagon for weeks before being "leaked" to the New York Times, envisaged a future in which the US establishes uncontested supremacy in the post cold-war world. Though the guidance didn’t underscore Israel and its role in that new world, those who composed the document were primarily the well known Israel crowd in Washington: then-Defense Department staffers Ewis Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, and America’s man in Iraq a few years later, Zalmay Khalilzad.
(More)
http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story-04020752801.htm
Please also see:
Gilad Atzmon: Tsunami in Gaza, Celebration of Peace in Jerusalem
http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story-03280794707.htm
As I took to the stage and began my speech, I was struck by the fact that there was not one Palestinian or Lebanese flag. Even the Venezuelan flag, which is often an invited sign of defiance and steadfastness, was absent. If that spectacle was a sign of strategic calculation: to distance the war in Iraq from all others, it was a grave mistake. I spoke exactly of that: it’s the same war, the same occupation; Israel and its neoconservative benefactors are recurring faces in the Middle East’s ongoing chaos. That is a fact that anti-war movements everywhere must keep at the forefront if they want their message to have validity or relevance.
The Israeli connection to the political "realignments" in the region goes back as early as 1992. The draft Defense Planning Guidance (DPG), which was circulated around the Pentagon for weeks before being "leaked" to the New York Times, envisaged a future in which the US establishes uncontested supremacy in the post cold-war world. Though the guidance didn’t underscore Israel and its role in that new world, those who composed the document were primarily the well known Israel crowd in Washington: then-Defense Department staffers Ewis Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, and America’s man in Iraq a few years later, Zalmay Khalilzad.
(More)
http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story-04020752801.htm
Please also see:
Gilad Atzmon: Tsunami in Gaza, Celebration of Peace in Jerusalem
http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story-03280794707.htm