Zionism, US Imperialism and Islamic Fundamentalism

[Classical_Liberal]

Personal note: I apologize that this comes from counterpunch which I believe has been uncautious about publishing antisemitic writers, but this is an excellent article anyway.

Zionism, US Imperialism and Islamic Fundamentalism

By FAWZIA AFZAL-KHAN

Since 9/11, I have written and published several essays examining the reductive discourses that sprang up, mushroom-like, in mainstream media particularly within the US, to explain that apocalyptic moment in terms of an "Us/Them" binary. Many of these limited, and in my opinion, spurious analyses (written and promoted by the likes of Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes etc) need to be challenged for obvious reasons. The most important of these, as far as I am concerned, is that linking Islam to terrorism does absolutely nothing to vitiate the anger and resentment millions of Muslims around the world feel toward the West in general and the United States in particular in this unipolar world, for what are essentially political reasons: the economic lop-sidedness of a top-down, winner-take-all globalization that serves to increase the wealth and power of the richer nations at the expense of the poorer ones.

The egregious example of the state of Israel, which is supported unequivocally by the USA militarily and economically to serve as its watchdog and policeman in the Middle East whose oil resources continue to fuel (no pun intended!), the imperial interests of the USA and other western nations, underscores for the vast majority of third world peoples, of whom Muslims comprise a substantial portion, the connection between the maintenance of global hegemony and colonial usurpation of indigenous peoples ' lands and resources and their concomitant subjugation and dehumanization. The ire against Israel that is manifesting itself increasingly vocally across not just the third world but within the heartland of Europe, should thus be seen for what it is: not as evidence of a "rise in anti-semitism" as supporters of Israel wish to paint it (including, unsurprisingly, prominent cabinet members of Ariel Sharon's right-wing government that is busy erecting yet more settlements in the Occupied Territories on a daily basis), but as the legitimate frustration of the world's have-nots against the haves. Israel, seen in this light, is simply the example par excellence, of the oppression and injustice upon which the contemporary world class system, the New world Order with USA at its head, is based. Insofar as the state of Israel proclaims itself to be a state for "Jews only," the expressions of anger directed against it (in its capacity as Colonialism's last outpost)--necessarily take on what appear to some to be the markings of anti-semitism, but are, in fact, the ire of colonized and neo-colonized peoples against the colonial Master.........

http://www.counterpunch.org/khan12012003.html