Letters to the Editor, March 9, 2005

Insults and Hate against Islam and Muslims

Do you skunks expect money to support your primitive anti-democratic, anti-female, pro-terrorist agenda? Am I missing something? Perhaps you are not aware of how primitive and suspect Islam has become; but then how can the fish know the water. Islam's hatred of democracy, of women of any kind of genuine freedom makes it anathema to any thinking individual.

Yesterday, walking along the upper westside of Manhattan I saw graffitti that that sadly sums up how most in MY country truly feel about Islam: "Kill all Muslims, let Allah sort them out." As one of your own said not long ago: While it may be true not all muslims are terrorist, it is true that all terrorists are muslims.

Think about it and then ask why we should trust Al-jazero.

Sincerely,

Steve Wood

Editor:

Dear Steve Wood,

Al-Jazeerah.info (as written clearly on the front page and the letters section) is an independent US publication, written mainly by Americans to educate Americans like you about issues the corporate media units do NOT tell you about.

Islam is a religion. Like Christianity and Judaism, it’s independent from its followers and their actions.

Is Christianity responsible for destroying Hiroshima and Nagazaki and killing all innocent civilians there because Christians dropped the nuclear bombs there?

Is Jesus Christ to blame for killing of more than three million Vietnamese by Christians?

Is Christ also responsible for killing more than 100,000 Iraqis in this war?

Is Moses responsible for the killing of Palestinians, subjugating them for the last 57 years, and evicting them from their lands, just because Israeli Jews have done that?

Neither Islam nor Christianity nor Judaism are responsible. These are capitalistic wars of greed for markets, resources, and control of the world.

Finally, there are about ten million Muslims in America who are good citizens and residents of the United States, about half a million of them live in New York, and thousands are around you in Manhattan. Is this how you feel about them? What harm did they do to you to feel that way about them and about their religion?

My reply to your insults and wish for killing Muslims is that I wish you a long and prosperous life free from hate and full of love to humanity.

May Allah forgive you, open your eyes to the truth, and fill your heart and mind with love for humanity.

Lebanese Civil War

As Lebanon seams to be working it’s way back to civil war, there is a simple way to put off or solve the problem of future civil war. It seams that Hizbullah loves Syria so much. it is probably they love Syria’s money as much as G. Bush loves American tax-payer’s money.

Then, why doesn’t Hizbullah go to Syria with the Syrian Army. They can operate from Syria just as easy as they can from Lebanon. This will hopefully stop or slow up another Lebanon Civil War. What do you think?

Bill Helton

Editor: It's not a solution to ask anybody to leave their homeland for somebody else to take it. It hasn't worked for the Israelis in the last 57 years when they forced the Palestinian out of their homeland and took their property and lands. Hizbullah is the strongest and most popular political party in Lebanon.

No other Lebanese power, even the government, can mobilize more than 500,000 people in a rally, like the one Hizbullah mobilized in gratitude to Syria.

I don't think that there will be another civil war in Lebanon despite the relentless attempts of Lebanon's enemies to start one.

Finally, until World War I, Lebanon and Syria were one country like most Arab countries. European imperialists (the British and the French) divided the Arab homeland into small states in order to rule them. But Arab unionists (Islamists and nationalists alike) never stopped the efforts or the thinking to re-unify the Arab homeland. It seems that they will succeed at the end because Arabs are realizing now that their disunity is enabling imperialist powers to conquer them.

It Was Your Faces

My brother and sister in Palestine, what did you see as you looked through the steel bars that covered your window? What unimaginable horrors met your beautiful young eyes? Maybe you were watching your older brother crawl through barbed wire to get to school. As you watched you wondered if you would ever see him again. You wondered if perhaps there were Israeli soldiers hiding near your home waiting for your brother or some other Palestinian to pass through the scopes of their high-powered rifles.

Maybe you were watching an Israeli bulldozer run over your neighbor’s house. Did you hear the screams of your little playmates as they were being buried alive? You might have been watching as your friend’s stomach was torn apart by machine gun bullets. You saw his innocent red blood gush out upon the ground and knew that any day the same could happen to you.

My brother and sister, I love and bless you.

My little brother in Palestine, I admired your courage when I saw you throw rocks at an Israeli tank. Your face had not a single trace of fear etched into it. Reflected in your eyes was the rage over the injustice and bloodshed that has been wrought against your people for the last 50 years. You knew that most probably you would be shot to death but did not care. That is true bravery. The American media has painted the acts of the US soldiers in Iraq to look like courage, but it isn’t. All of them together cannot match the courage in that single act of rebellion that you flung towards your enemy. My little brother, I love and bless you.

My sisters in Palestine,

What was it that made your faces take on such terrified expressions as you crouched on the ground next to each other? What kind of terror caused you to clutch your heads and scream so loudly that I, on the other side of the earth heard you? Were you hearing the heavy footsteps of Israeli soldiers coming closer to your hiding place? You knew that in a few moments they would probably find and destroy you. Maybe you were watching your father being beaten as he was led away from you.

I am only a 12 year-old girl brought up in the United States, so I cannot even begin to imagine your fear and what might have caused it. I can only wonder and sympathize with you. My brothers and sisters in Palestine, the Middle East and all over the world, I love you, bless you and will never ever forget you.

Stefania Glenn