ARAB LEAGUE AMBASSADOR: ISRAEL BEHIND 9/11!!

Arab League Ambassador to Britain Lecture at House of Parliament: 'Israel's Hand in the [9/11] Matter is Clear'

The April 1, 2005 issue of the online Saudi royal family weekly magazine Ain Al-Yaqeen included the transcript of a talk given by Arab League Ambassador Ali Muhsen Hamid to Britain before the Conservative Foreign and Commonwealth Council at the Houses of Parliament. In his talk, titled "Arabs and the West: Indispensable Relation," Hamid emphasized the cultural affinities between the Arab world and the West, and portrayed Israel as the major factor standing between them.

"When Israel states that Arabs are terrorists the west quickly follows suit. When Israel says that democracy should be imposed on Arabs by force, echoes of this view begin to manifest [themselves] in some western media outlets and western think tanks. When Israel begins to demonize Iraq and Iran the west goes to war against the former and begins to issue threatening admonishments to the latter...

"What makes matters worse is that some people in the west see that the issues of democracy, good governance and the rule of law are inapplicable in the Arab world, because the absence of the foundations necessary for their implementation is an inherent part of the eastern psyche, and that 'eastern despotism' is the norm in the Arab political system...

"It is true that we do not yet have a Westminster style democracy, but we nevertheless have systems of government that are gradually opening out which do not close the doors to renewal and reinvigoration. It could have been the old Orientalist terminology which led the U.S. to adopt the initiative of 'democratizing' the Middle East from the outside, and to unofficially view Islam as an enemy of democracy...

"But Washington entered actively into the fray after the terrorist events perpetrated on its own soil in 9/11/01. This was not a good justification for its enmity towards Arabs and Muslims. Israel's hand in the matter is clear."

....Neo-conservatives and the Israeli lobby quickly adopted a different logic, which stated that the cause of this terrorism was not the Israeli occupation but Islam, because it incites to violence and hatred of the other. They thus transported hatred to the battlefield in the region.

"Of course Israel always has to be above censure and criticism. The late president Arafat donated his blood to the victims of 9/11, but despite this the nobility of the act was treated with disdain, and even developed into an accusation leveled against him of terrorism.

"Israel got on the PR bandwagon and, together with the U.S., depicted itself as a victim of terrorism. The Palestinians, who are the victims of daily Israeli terrorism, became once again terrorists. They were supposed to endure all this without batting an eyelid. Freedom and independence, for them, were taboos. Nobody wished them to have the honor of resisting an occupation which has endured for four decades. They were not allowed to follow in the footsteps of the French Maquis during the Second World War."

"The history of Arab civilization enables us to truly feel proud that there is nothing in our past to be ashamed of or to exonerate ourselves from responsibility for. We were not terrorists, nor were we antisemitic in any way, because we ourselves are semites. Jewish people lived through some of their best times with us. Maimonides, or Moussa the son of Maimoun, as we call him in Arabic, lived in Andalusia, and wrote his philosophical works in Arabic, was an Arab citizen and enjoyed his full rights as a citizen. We had no inquisition, nor did our civilization produce Nazi or Fascist ideologies or ideologies which support the uprooting of a people from their homeland and the continued diasporisation of millions of its citizens, unable to exercise their right of return."