The oppressors’ rally
Well, I managed to get to the rally organised by “Global Justice UK 2004” which I got the leaflet for yesterday. As I had suspected, there was really no place for Muslims at this rally. Of the few speakers I could see (less than 10 including the compere), two were members of a Zionist organisation called Betar, and two were distinctly “Orange” Northern Irish. Another was from Sri Lanka.
As I mentioned below, nobody can accuse Muslims of passing up an opportunity to demonstrate in order to clear their religion’s name of association with terrorism – the rally was barely advertised. It seemed most of the attendees were either Jews or Russians, with a few Sri Lankans, and there was an Israeli flag on display as well as banners proclaiming “No Shelter for Terrorists in UK”, “Zakayev out of London” and “They [terrorists] live next door to us!”. Ahmed Zakayev is the former Chechen information minister who two countries (Denmark and Britain) have refused to hand over to his enemies in Russia; he currently lives in London. I also saw people holding up cards with the names of Russian and Jewish children killed in recent terrorist attacks (some of the Russian children mentioned were Muslims).
The first Northern Irish speaker was called Eileen (I didn’t catch the surname), and was the most moderate of the speakers, but still managed to get in references to “ethnic cleansing” of formerly mixed areas of Derry (British maps call it Londonderry, an absurd name dating from the time of Protestant settlement from Scotland). The fact is that Catholics have also been kicked out of their homes in some areas. The Sri Lankan made the fantastic claim that the Tamil terrorists could be starved out within days if the government wanted to, but the two main parties are controlled by the Tamil terrorists!
There were two Betar speakers, and I can’t remember which of them said what, but they were pretty extreme. Terrorism isn’t the result of poverty or oppression, but of children being taught to hate. “Judaea and Samaria” (what everyone else calls the West Bank) were “liberated” by the Israelis apparently, and Arab anti-Israelism is just the way dictators distract their people from their own incompetence and repression. There was also a reference to “the so-called Palestinians” which is an attempt to rubbish any claim by the local Arabs to their own land by saying they are not a nation, which really doesn’t matter because they are the rightful owners of much of “Israel”, whatever they are called. (If you want to know where Betar are coming from, there’s presently [an article on their website](http://www.betar.co.uk/articles/betar1089800130.php) which suggests that the recent International Court decision against their “security wall sorry, fence” is motivated by anti-Semitism, apparently because it’s supposedly dominated by Christians and Muslims.)
The second NI speaker was in between the two Betar men, and was the main reason I called this rally the “oppressors’ rally”. I’m no IRA sympathiser, but the suggestion that the IRA are linked to al-Qa’ida as well as ETA (and he mentioned others) strikes me as a classic wild conspiracy theory. Incidentally, he lumped the ANC in with his list of terrorists, which really does show where the hardline Orange Protestants are coming from. I’ve seen pictures of Orange rallies in which David Trimble, the leader of the mainstream Ulster Unionist Party, was called “Ulster’s De Klerk”, the South African leader who dismantled apartheid. This was not supposed to be complimentary!
And it’s not true to claim that terrorism is not linked to poverty and oppression. One of the Betar speakers asked why Brazilian slum dwellers were not engaging in such tactics while Arabs in Gaza are. The answer is that not everyone in the Brazilian favelas are all that poor, and they are not oppressed except, perhaps, by the local drug gangs which control parts of those areas. In the 1960s, when peasants were being driven off their land in central Brazil, some did resort to violence.
It’s also not true, even if it is fashionable, to claim that “appeasement” does not work. It didn’t work against Hitler because Hitler had an entire nation’s economy behind him. If a large group are oppressed and some of them resort to terrorism, then only accommodating the needs of the large group will solve the problem. History demonstrates this: for example, after General Franco died and the democratic governments of Spain instituted regional autonomy, support for ETA drastically dwindled, even among its actual operatives (including one called “Wilson” who boasted of blowing one of Franco’s officials three storeys into the air). The IRA, which was supported by a substantial part of Northern Ireland’s native population even though their tactics were atrocious, stopped their bombings after the party representing them, Sinn Fein, was included in the political process. (People often support their own countries’ armies, even when their tactics are atrocious.) By the way, the Zionists did their fair share of terrorism, and their agents are known to have carried out kidnappings and assassinations in Europe and North Africa.
The Jewish speakers also made the point about Yasir Arafat’s terrorist history, that his PLO did aeroplane hijackings, etc., before Oslo. People like this don’t want to negotiate an inch of turf with anyone – I suspect that he ideally wants to see the Arabs kicked out of the West Bank altogether. I don’t have much confidence in Arafat either – I suspect that if he ever becomes a real ruler, his Palestine may end up being as repressive as his former Tunisian hosts – but this rally makes it clear that the supporters of state terror are quite welcome to live and preach openly in the UK. It’s only rebel terrorists that are no longer welcome.
