The War On Terror (Part 004)

Coups and Invasions

After 1948, several Arab countries revolted and removed their pro-West monarchs. Both Egypt and Iraq had spells of being independent under nationalist Arab leaders. These leaders were considered heros in the Arab world but terrorists by the West. Their human rights records were often no better or worse than the pro-West despots. However, their human rights violations were publicised in the Western media and the leaders demonised. Many of these leaders wanted to take control of their natural resources (often oil). In more than one case, violent coups or invasions were arranged by the West to install pro-West dictators.
Israel was heavily armed and supported by the West and began to behave like a Western outpost on Arab land.
In 1951 UK troops seized the Suez Canal in Egypt. In 1956 the UK with France and Israel invaded Egypt killing 18,000 people including over 250 refugees killed by Israel.
In 1952 France began fighting independence movements in Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. The king of Morocco was exiled. Tunisia was frequently bombed. In Algeria, over a million people would die before independence was attained in 1960, many killed by French troops or settlers.
In 1953 the UK and USA organised a coup in Iran removing the democratically elected and popular leader, Mohammed Mossadeq and replacing him with Reza Pahlavi (known in the West as The Shah of Iran), a pro-West dictator who brutally ruled Iran and gave concessions to Western oil companies for 25 years. The USA helped set up and train the Shah's brutal secret police.
When the Shah was deposed in 1979, he fled to the USA. The Iranians requested his return to face trial but were denied. This event, the reason why USA embassy staff were taken hostage by Iranian students, is rarely mentioned in Western media accounts. During the period after 1979, Iran ran its own affairs outside of Western control. In early 2005, the USA (the country with the largest number of nuclear weapons, including over 400 under its control in Europe) began threatening Iran "for attempting to make nuclear weapons".
During the late 1950s, UK forces brutally put down resistance and independence movements in Oman and Yemen.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s the USA twice attempted to remove the government of Syria. They sent troops to Lebanon to put down anti-West dissidents.
The USA also attempted to destabilise Iraq by arming the Kurdish minority that the West had ignored up to then. Eventually in 1963, the USA backed a coup in Iraq that removed the popular leader, Abdul Karim Kassem. He was replaced (and here is an irony) by the Ba'ath Party. Thousands died in the purges that followed while the USA recognised and praised the new government. Exactly 40 years later, that same Ba'ath Party would be demonised, sanctioned and finally removed by the USA with talk of "bringing democracy to the Iraqis".
The list goes on...
People in the West are frequently told how "Arabs hate us and our civilisation". During the 1950s and 1960s no Arab state attacked or attempted to control any Western country. However, thousands of Arabs were killed as a result of military or covert action by the West or by Israel.

Occupation

In 1967, Israel invaded and occupied the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza. It has since built hundreds of settlements (more accurately "colonies") on this land in violation of the Geneva Convention and world opinion.
The West (especially the USA) backed Israel unconditionally and provided arms and aid. In 2004, Israel was still the largest recipient of aid from the USA. The suffering of Palestinians remains largely unreported in the West. Palestinian resistance to the occupation has always been labelled as terrorism by Israel and its Western allies.
2 million Palestinians were forced to live under occupation while another 2 million were refugees. Over 200 villages in the Golan Heights (taken from Syria) were depopulated.
Even now, Palestinian land in the occupied territories is being confiscated. Thousands of houses have been demolished and whole families made homeless. A wall is being built that creates ghettos. Instead of following the internationally recognised "Green Line" separating the occupied West Bank from Israel, the wall skirts deep inside the occupied territories splitting Palestinian villages from their farm land, schools and services.
Hundreds of colonies (called "settlements" by a sympathetic West) have been built, along with access roads that can only be used by the occupiers and not by the indigenous population. The settlers use over 80% of the water supply to water their gardens while the Palestinians have to suffer water shortages. Israeli checkpoints smother the occupied territories making routine journeys between villages, between home and work, even between patient and doctor difficult or impossible. The humiliation felt by the Palestinians on their own land serves to stir up hatred for the Israelis and their Western backers.
Little of this is shown by Western media, but is shown every day to Arab populations in the region. It is the cause of much anger in the Arab world but is barely discussed in Europe or the USA.
Any Palestinian resistance, even after over 35 years of violent occupation, is labelled as terrorism. Actions by Israel (even when they frequently violate the Geneva Convention regulation protecting occupied peoples and their property) are labelled as self defence or retaliation to terrorism.
On Western TV interviews, Palestinians are always asked when their violence will stop. Palestinians (the occupied and disarmed people) are asked to be responsible for the "security" of the Israelis (the heavily armed occupiers).
The news coverage is such that many people do not realise that it is Israel that is occupying Palestinian territory and not the other way round.
Very few media outlets in the West show maps of the "settlements".
In 2005, the Western media were trumpeting the withdrawal of Israeli settlers and troops from Gaza as historic. The "settlers" who were to be evacuated were interviewed in a sympathetic way, unlike the thousands of Palestinians who frequently have their houses demolished away from the interest of the West's media. What was not emphasised was that all borders, airspace, and ocean beyond a few kilometers would remain under Israeli control.