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<font size=4><b>An Al Quds day letter to Tony Blair. From Lauren Booth,
in Iran.<br><br>
</font><font size=3>By Lauren Booth<br>
3 September 2010<br><br>
<br>
</b>Dear Tony,<br><br>
Congratulations on your political memoir becoming an instant bestseller.
I’m in Iran and have the only copy in the country. I can tell you,
its so fiercely fought over, it’s worth its weight in WMD’s. Note to
Random House; have ‘A Journey’ translated into Farsi and Arabic asap,
it’ll fly off the shelves in this part of the world. <br><br>
Tony, yesterday I went the Al Quds day protest in Tehran. You may have
heard of it? It’s the rally where Iranians gather to protest against
Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine, including the Holy city of
Jerusalem.<br><br>
I’m being sarcastic by asking if you’ve heard of Al Quds day, because I
know you have. It is your very worst nightmare right? After all
Tehran is the place where politics and Islam intertwine.<br><br>
Personally I’ve never understood this fear of ‘political Islam’ it seems
to me that religious people should always be educated on world events
rather than kept in ignorance. Like say, Mid West Christian Zionists in
the US The kind of folk who can’t find their home city on a map of their
state but re certain they hate Islam even if their not sure whether its a
type of curry or a foreign make of veh-ic-ule.<br><br>
Anyway, yesterday, I stood in the midst of more than one million Iranian
Muslims all chanting in unison ‘Marg Bar Isre-hell!’ and ‘Marg Bar
Am-ri-ca!’ You know what that means Tony I’m sure ; ‘Down with Israel,
down with America’. The men, women and children around me withstood a day
of no water and no food (it’s called Ramadan, Tony, it’s a fast). Coping
with hunger and thirst in the hundred degrees heat, as if it were
nothing. They can withstand deprivation in the Muslim world. Here in Iran
they feel proud to suffer in order to express solidarity with
the people of Palestine. It';s kind of like the way you express
solidarity with America only without illegal chemical weapons and a
million civilian deaths. <br><br>
Some mothers at the rally wept, not out of hatred for ‘the West’
but out of empathy for the mothers of Rafah, Khan Younis, Nablus and
Jenin. Do you recognise these place names Tony, as Middle East peace
envoy you really should. Israel has massacred children in all of these
cities in recent years. Didn’t you know? <br><br>
Today when the streets of London reverberate with cries of ‘Allahuakbar!’
and ‘Down Down Israel.’ Christians and Jews will join the thunderous
cries of ‘Down Down Israel, marching shoulder to shoulder with the
‘political’ Muslims you say you fear so much. <br><br>
Perhaps you believe that I am in danger in Iran, especially on a day like
Al Quds. Well here again Tony, you’ve been fed and have consumed in its
entirety, a massive lie. The lie that says when Muslims express an
opinion in groups, in public, it is always spurred on by hatred of
'us' infidels. As if all protests that are led by Muslim communities are
a kind of long held grudge against the Crusades. <br>
<br>
Perhaps they should be more, not less angry here than they are Tony.
Because having read the postcript to your bestseller its clear you are on
a modern Crusade.<br><br>
The ‘conflict’ between Palestine and Israel is according to you all about
religion and has nothing at all to do with the ethnic cleansing of the
Arab population, nor the degredation of those who remain beneath the
boots of their Israeli occupiers. You say that Arabs have and always will
see ‘Jews’ as enemies. For God’s sake Tony do your history. And if you’re
going to run a ‘Faith Foundation’ then better gen up on Islam 101 don’t
you think? Did your pals in Tel Aviv forget to tell you how many
thousands of Jews lived in Historic Palestine in harmony with their Arab
neighbours before 1948? Do you really not know that even today tens of
thousand of Jews reside contentedly in Iran? <br><br>
I’ve sat with Muslim families, those whose children have been
burned by Israeli/US phosphorous bombs. Those who are still suffering
hunger due to the Israel siege of Gaza. Those who have lived through the
early days of sanctions against Iran when they needed food vouchers just
to live. And every single Muslim in these suffering families has the same
message ; ‘We don’t hate anyone for their race or their religion. We
cannot hate Jews they are in our holy book it is against the teachings of
the Koran.’ But Tony let me ask you this. Why should any people, Muslim
or otherwise, be expected to put up with this kind of constant threats
from you and your bosses in Tel Aviv and Washington? Do you have any
understanding of what it is like to live in Gaza? Under siege, attacked
with chemical weapons, your children’s schools razed to the ground by
Israeli missiles, your hospitals shelled, your electricity limited, your
water undrinkable?<br><br>
Actually Tony I think you are a sypathetic person. I actually think that
you do feel twinges of pain at the hardships suffered by millions
in the Middle East as a direct result of your support for Israel. Then
you put that feeling to one side, because on a fundamental level - you
think 'they' deserve it don't you? <br><br>
In your book you say you knew full well how many Beirut homes were
flattened, how many civilians died in Lebanon in 2006. Yet you dismiss
Lebanese rage about Israeli occupation of ‘Shebas Farm’ as being an
irrelevance, about a ‘tiny’ amount of land. You cannot see it as part of
the constant pressure on Lebanese society as a whole by their
heavily armed aggressive Israeli neighbour. You see it as: ‘Israel is
attacked. Israel strikes back.’ As if Israel lives in placid peace, being
kindly to all around it in between these massacres. <br><br>
As other world leaders came out to demand Israel immediately cease its
2006 bombing raids on Lebanese cities, you stayed silent.<br><br>
‘If I had condemned Israel’ you say in your book ‘I would have been more
than dishonest. It would have undermined my world view.’<br><br>
Your world view is that Muslims, are mad, bad, dangerous to know. A
contagion to be contained. Your final chapter is a must read here in the
Middle East Tony, congratulations! For it lays out the ‘them’ and ‘us’
agenda of your friends in Washington and Tel Aviv.<br>
<br><br>
In the final chapter you say; ‘we need a religious counter attack’
against Islam. And by ‘Islam’ you mean the Al Quds rallies, the
Palestinian intifada (based on an anti Apartheid struggle Tony, NOT
religious bigotry), against every Arab who fails to put their arms in the
air as the F16 missiles rain on their homes and refugee camps andsing a
rousing chorus of ‘Imagine all the people...’<br>
When you say ‘extremism’ must be ‘controlled and beaten’ you mean that
you and your kind of morally bankrupt (but filthy rich) world leader
wants control over the rising solidarity spreading through the Ummah and
being joined by activist of all creeds on the streets of Paris, London,
Bradford, Rome. <br>
‘Not only extremism must be defeated’ you have written but ‘the
narrative' ' has to be assailed.’<br><br>
Iran is indeed the place where Islamic tradition meets political
action.<br><br>
<br>
They are highly aware of the history of this region, the wrongs
perpetrated by Israel against Palestine and the political machinations of
the US and the UK governments to isolate them.. All thing considered and
nice as the people have been during my stay. I wouldn't recommend coming
over on a book tour though...<br><br>
<br>
Lauren Booth<br>
Broadcaster and Journalist<br>
Mail on Sunday<br>
Press TV, UK <br>
Article originally appeared on Gilad Atzmon
(<a href="http://www.gilad.co.uk/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.gilad.co.uk/</a>). <br><br>
<br><br>
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