So, you are probably asking, who the hell is Dan Yaseen?
He’s the Vice President of our local “antiwar and social justice” organization, called ‘Peace Fresno‘. I’ve met him and he seems to be a nice guy.
Dear Dan,
Yesterday I listened to your program on KFCF, “Speaking Truth to Empire,” on which you interviewed Ali Abunimah. I tuned in late, unfortunately, so I didn’t hear the whole program. But the part I heard was all about Israel.
I heard you ask him friendly questions to elicit his opinion on this subject. And I heard him, in his polished way, spew a stream of lies. I heard him assassinate the character of a whole nation. I heard him implicitly advocate genocide — yes, you read me right, because this is what his support for Hamas means in practice.
I didn’t hear you disagree with a word of it.
Peace Fresno is supposedly against war. So how come you are on the side of those who have brought almost continuous war to the Middle East since Israel was founded (actually, since before that, because those same forces were killing Jews who wanted to live in the region since about 1920)?
Peace Fresno is supposedly against colonialism and imperialism. So how come you are against the people who actually kicked the British out of Palestine? How come you support Iran, the real imperialist in today’s Middle East?
Peace Fresno supposedly abhors war crimes. So how come you support Hizballah and Syria, who have tens of thousands of missiles — some with chemical warheads — aimed at Israel’s towns and cities? Or Hamas, which randomly shoots mortars and rockets at Israeli towns, deliberately launches rockets from locations near schools and stores them in mosques, and commits drive-by murders of pregnant women?
Peace Fresno supposedly hates racism and apartheid. So how come you are on the side of the racist, apartheid dictatorships of the Middle East?
Peace Fresno is supposedly opposed to ethnic cleansing. You are very concerned about Arab refugees. So how come you didn’t seem to notice that in 1948 the Jordanian Army forcibly removed every last Jew from Judea/Samaria and East Jerusalem? Or the hundreds of thousands of Jews forced to leave the Arab world after 1948? How come you approve of the Arab demand today that a ‘peace’ agreement must include the evacuation of every last Jew east of the 1949 armistice line?
“Israel just has to evacuate the territories and there will be peace” you’ll say. Really? Read the Hamas Covenant or even the PLO/Fatah platform (an old version? — the latest one, accepted at the Fatah General Congress in 2009 explicitly incorporates it). Think about the meaning of ‘racism’ and ‘genocide’ when you read these documents. Pay attention, too, to what happened when Israel evacuated Gaza.
Frankly, the local ‘peace and justice’ movement, including Peace Fresno, WILPF, numerous other groups, coalitions, cooperatives, etc. — and absolutely not excluding the KFCF radio station, which adds its own poison to a schedule already dripping with venom from KPFA, Berkeley — has bought into an ideology of hate, an ideology exemplified by its pantheon, including the Nazi Mufti al-Husseini, the Original Terrorist Yasser Arafat, and minor deities like the child-killers Dalal Mughrabi and Samir Kuntar, or perhaps Amna Muna.
How wrong can you people be? Why do you believe without question propagandists like Abunimah; the mentally deranged, like Noam Chomsky or Norman Finkelstein; or the corrupt, like Human Rights Watch?
Think about it, Dan. Is this what the antiwar and social justice movement should be about?
Technorati Tags: Israel, KFCF, Ali Abunimah, Dan Yaseen, Peace Fresno
We live in a world in which ideals and beautiful words have been twisted into their opposite meanings.
All in support of a people who do not want peace with Israel on terms that would end with the recognition of Israel as the Jewish State and a termination of the conflict.
Yes, we do have to wonder what is it the antiwar and social justice movement really supports.
I’ve lost track of the number of times you have provided a link to the Hamas Covenant. I have to wonder if any of the members of Peace Fresno (or any of the other under-educated groups) ever take the time to actually read it. If they do read it, do they just overlook what it says? Do they think the Covenant really doesn’t “mean” what it says? Iran supplies Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist groups with an excellent “propaganda war” and these “peace activists” fall for it, hook, line, and sinker. Iran also supplies the weapons for the terrorists, like Hamas, to kill our own troops.
How can any decent American live with that on their conscience?
Look, everybody, their name shouldn’t be “Peace Fresno”, it should be “Appeasement Fresno”.
Any time you see a “peace movement” type organization in the West, you just replace the word “peace” with “appeasement”.
That pretty much covers why you aren’t going to get an answer to your letter, Vic.
I commend you for taking on all these local anti- Israel groups by yourself. Aren’t there any other supporters of Israel in the area with the brains and guts to speak out against the villification and stupidity of the Israel bashers?